Gothic arch

“ For the fact is, that all good Gothic is nothing more than the developement, in various ways, and on every conceivable scale, of the group formed by the pointed arch for the bearing line below, and the gable for the protecting line above; and from the huge, gray, shaly slope of the cathedral roof, with its elastic pointed vaults beneath, to the slight crown-like points that enrich the smallest niche of its doorway, one law and one expression will be found in all. ”

“ The constructive value of Gothic architecture is, however, far greater than that of Romanesque, as the pointed arch is not only susceptible of an infinite variety of forms and applications to the weight to be sustained, but it possesses, in the outline given to its masonry at its perfect periods, the means of self-sustainment to a far greater degree than the round arch. ”

“ We need not stop to consider the earlier innovations in buildings in which the round arch alone continues to be employed—as in the apse of St. Martin des Champs at Paris, and in the Collegiate Church of Poissy, where the vaulting compartments are merely separated by transverse ribs,—but rather begin our investigation of the growth of Gothic in France, with those monuments in which the pointed arch first appears as a constructive device in vaulting. ”

“ For in one point of view Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, or disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace and unexhausted energy ”

“ Granted a Church, Saint Thomas's Church was the most expressive that man has made, and the great Gothic cathedrals were its most complete expression.
Perhaps the best proof of it is their apparent instability. Of all the elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the Gothic cathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slender nervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwards of the flying buttress,—the visible effort to throw off a visible strain,—never let us forget that Faith alone supports it, and that, if Faith fails, Heaven is lost. ”

“ FIG. 95 In the aisles and in the triforium gallery the tenacity with which the German builders held on to their Romanesque traditional methods of construction is singularly marked. In these parts of the building the vaults have no Gothic rib systems—the groins having no ribs, and the transverse ribs being of the heavy Romanesque type. The external character of this edifice is very far from Gothic. The openings are few and small, and in them the round arch mingles with the pointed arch. ”

“ It will thus be seen that the full development of the Gothic system is brought out only where the plan of the building includes a central nave and side aisles. It was in such buildings that the system was evolved. The principle of the prop or brace, which the flying buttress embodies, as contrasted with the inert stay, which the solid Romanesque buttress embodies, is one of the most fecund principles of Gothic construction. By its use, in connection with that of the pointed arch in the ribs of the vault, is the Gothic attenuation of supports rendered possible. ”

“ It does not, therefore, afford us the opportunity of judging of the progress of the art. There subsist, however, some smaller specimens of a later date, which might almost be taken for Gothic buildings. [378]
The characteristics of the Gothic are—the pointed arch; the arch resting on the column without entablature; vaulting; arched gateways; splayed windows; buttresses; the spire tower, or belfry. These may severally be traced to the Saracens. ”

“ But we Northerns are not so easily to be talked out of the powerful, solemn impressions which seize upon the mind at entering a Gothic cathedral. We feel, on the contrary, a strong desire to investigate and to justify the source of this impression. A very slight attention will convince us, that the Gothic architecture displays not only an extraordinary degree of mechanical skill, but also a marvellous power of invention; and, on a closer examination, we recognize its profound significance, and perceive that as well as the Grecian it constitutes in itself a complete and finished system. ”

“ But it is important to observe that, in true Gothic, oblong vaults are never constructed upon ribs which all spring from the same level, and whose crowns all reach the same height. Other exigencies, which will be explained in the next chapter, stood in the way of so constructing them. True Gothic vaults are always, to some extent, both stilted and domed. But though full advantage of the pointed arch, in affording any height with any span, could not be taken, its introduction was a great help, and it gave a powerful stimulus to constructive invention. ”

“ Another sure sign of lingering Gothic influence is where the round arch is fringed with cusping.
The more typically Renaissance form of design is where a huge monumental structure fills the greater part of the window, [Pg 348] not canopying a subject, but having in front of it a figure group (Transept of S. Gudule, page 71) . The foreground figures stand out in dark relief against the architecture and the sky beyond, seen through the central arch. Into this grey-blue merges very often a distant landscape, painted in great part upon the blue, and really seeming to recede into the distance. ”

“ He talked to her endlessly about his love of horizontals: how they, the great levels of sky and land in Lincolnshire, meant to him the eternality of the will, just as the bowed Norman arches of the church, repeating themselves, meant the dogged leaping forward of the persistent human soul, on and on, nobody knows where; in contradiction to the perpendicular lines and to the Gothic arch, which, he said, leapt up at heaven and touched the ecstasy and lost itself in the divine. ”

“ The whole is built, stables included, in a Gothic castellated form, of a dark slate-coloured stone; on entering the vestibule, we, for a short time, imagined ourselves in the chapel, a mistake, though soon discovered, yet liable to happen to any visitor; the ceiling having Gothic arches, with a gallery suitable to it, and several niches cut in the side walls: we were next conduced through a long suite of apartments, the design of them all equally convenient and elegant. The landscape from the Gothic windows is both beautiful and sublime ”

“ Gothic architecture is an expression of the Christian spirit; in it is manifest the reaction from licentiousness to asceticism. Man's spiritual nature, awakening in a body worn and weakened by debaucheries, longs ardently and tries vainly to escape. Of some such mood a Gothic cathedral is the expression: its vaulting, marvelously supported upon slender shafts by reason of a nicely adjusted equilibrium of forces; its restless, upward-reaching pinnacles and spires; its ornament, intricate and enigmatic—all these suggest the over-strained organism of an ascetic ”

“ No more perfect effort at worthy worship of the Most High has ever been accomplished than is to be seen in the Gothic cathedrals in every country in Europe as they exist to the present day. While the movement began in North France, and gradually spread to other countries, there was never any question of mere slavish imitation, but on the contrary in each country Gothic architecture took on a national character and developed into a charming expression of the special characteristics of the people for whom and by whom it was made. ”

“ The origin of what is loosely called Gothic architecture—which is generally considered to include the styles, with their transitions, from Early English to late Perpendicular, or Tudor-Gothic—is not free from obscurity, but it is certain that it began to be employed in ecclesiastical edifices about the time that the Goths settled in Italy, although all the available evidence goes to prove that the style originated and underwent its earliest developments in the north-west of Europe, and penetrated by slow degrees to the south and east. ”

“ The work, whether we like it or not at first 190glance, is obviously something new in Gothic architecture. The whole development of medieval Gothic was in the direction of eliminating the wall surfaces. It achieved this by a sort of skeleton construction of lofty piers, arches, vaulting ribs, and flying buttresses. Great glass windows filled the interstices, and these themselves were articulated by stone mullions and tracery in the same linear way. The resulting structure was an intricate scheme of thrusts and supports. ”

“ This ought to be emphasised, for there is no quality to which more of the impressiveness of such sculpture is owing. Multitudinous as are the details which enter into the design of any great cathedral front, there is rarely any scattered effect in the total impression. An harmonious relationship of mass to mass, from largest things to smallest, is maintained. Such breadth is, indeed, a fundamental quality of all good art; but its manifestation is perhaps more remarkable in Gothic architecture than in any other, because of the multitude of subdivisions through which it has to find expression. ”

“ The base also—almost always some modification of the Attic type—is equally admirable in its profile, giving, with artful grace, real and apparent stability to the shaft. Indeed, there is hardly a more beautiful thing in Gothic art than one of these base profiles. The proportions of its parts, the use of contrasting angles, and especially the character of the curve of the lower torus, are unsurpassed, if indeed they are equalled by any of the mouldings of antiquity.
In a definition of Gothic architecture none but the truest form of the art properly concerns us. ”

“ Why is Gothic architecture better adapted for religious buildings than any Grecian or Oriental style? Because its long aisles, vaulted roofs and pointed arches, leading the vision up to the unseen, tell of mystery, and draw the mind away beyond the visible and concrete to something greater which it hints ”

“ Introduce your Gothic line by line and stone by stone; never mind mixing it with your present architecture; your existing houses will be none the worse for having little bits of better work fitted to them; build a porch, or point a window, if you can do nothing else; and remember that it is the glory of Gothic architecture that it can do anything. Whatever you really and seriously want, Gothic will do for you; but it must be an earnest want. It is its pride to accommodate itself to your needs ”

“ The Gothic building is much more extensive in scale, is not necessarily symmetrical in its main design, and the decorative details appear as if worked according to the individual taste and pleasure of each carver, and not upon any preconceived theory of form or proportion. In the Greek building all the predominant lines are horizontal; in the mediæval building they are vertical. In the Greek building every opening is covered by a lintel; in the Gothic building every opening is covered by an arch. ”

“ The other arches of the Gothic colonnades are lofty, and enriched with foliage and angels. The Ch. is completely uncovered; three sides of the cloisters have an arched roof in pretty good preservation: their arches are semicircular; but a profusion of Gothic ornament exists in other parts of the edifice. The front and sides of the altar are ornamented with Gothic arches, foliage, and tracery; and there still remain pedestals for statues, whose sanctity could not work miracles against Time. The tourist must not neglect to notice the eastern window, which is very beautiful. ”

“ The excellence of Gothic architecture lay not so much in its individual details as in its perfect adaptation to the purposes for which it was developed—its triumphs were achieved in the building of cathedrals and large churches. In the domain of civil and domestic architecture it produced nothing comparable with its ecclesiastical edifices, because it was the requirements of the cathedral and not of the palace, town-hall, or dwelling, that gave it its form and character. ”

“ But rudeness is by no means a characteristic of Gothic, which is not a product of unmixed Northern genius. For, by the time that Gothic architecture had begun to take form, the mingling of races, that had long been going on, had produced,, in the locality where this art first appeared, a people in whose constitution were happily blended some of the finest characteristics of the Latin and Germanic stocks. It was this people who developed the Gothic style and gave to its marvellous constructive system an equally new and appropriate system of adornment. ”

“ Exactly in the same manner, we shall find that Gothic architecture has external forms, and internal elements. Its elements are certain mental tendencies of the builders, legibly expressed in it; as fancifulness, love of variety, love of richness, and such others. Its external forms are pointed arches, vaulted roofs, &c. And unless both the elements and the forms are there, we have no right to call the style Gothic. It is not enough that it has the Form, if it have not also the power and life. It is not enough that it has the Power, if it have not the form. ”

“ It might be thought, that while Gothic architecture was a great invention in its time and extremely suitable for ecclesiastical or even educational edifices of various kinds, its time of usefulness has passed and that men's widening experience in structural work, ever since, has carried him far away from it. As a matter of fact, most of our ecclesiastical buildings are still built on purely Gothic lines, and a definite effort is made, as a rule, to have the completed religious edifice combine a number of the best features of Thirteenth Century Gothic. ”