Moorish architecture

“ There are delicate pillars of marble, with gold capitals. The niches of the dome are beautifully painted, and the chief arch is decorated with mosaics. Over the arch is an inscription in gold on a ground of blue.{111}
The slender pillars and graceful double arches of the entrance to the vestibule of the Mihrâb are examples of Moorish architecture in its finest manifestation. Very gorgeous and intricate is the design of the façade of the Mihrâb. The portal is a horseshoe arch, handsomely ornamented, and above runs a tier of smaller horseshoe arches. ”

“ One of these, which lies at the very root of modern skill in house building—we mean the framing of timber floors—may be assigned to her artificers. Houses were thenceforward built in stories, and skill in this respect soon issued in domestic works, which in utility and outward beauty surpassed the ancient dwellings. These improvements were soon adopted elsewhere, from the ninth and tenth centuries downward.
The Moorish architecture, introduced into Europe by the Arabian conquerors of Spain, early attained a high development. ”

“ The magnificence of the earlier Renaissance work, which was introduced into Spain when she was at the zenith of her power, and (owing to the discovery of a new world) the possessor of enormous wealth, has scarcely yet been recognized, in consequence of the greater attraction of the Moorish architecture; there is no doubt that its exuberant richness in the 16th century derives its inspiration from the latter, and especially so in patios or courts found in every class of building, ecclesiastical as well as civil. ”

“ The contrary flexure is a form of pointed arch, and it was used by the Moors. Sir Christopher Wren, and other authorities upon architectural art, lean to the opinion that the so-called Gothic arch is of Oriental origin. There are, however, a number of students who have endeavoured to disprove the Moorish genesis of the narrow arch.{67}
In the First Period of Morisco architecture, the talent and the energy of the designers were chiefly applied to the planning of military defences, towers, walls, and embattlements. ”

“ The Almohade architecture displays a base taste, which imitates rather than feels, and creates forms by exaggerations which are unsuitable to the design, and thus differs in æsthetic principles from the Mudejaren-Moorish work of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, which reveals an instinctive feeling for the beautiful in ornamentation, which never loses sight of the elegant, the graceful, and the bold, and consequently never falls into aberration. ”

“ On the exterior the effect is rather that of a low steeple covered with a stone roof with spherical sides than of a dome, but the design is so novel and so suggestive, that it is well worth detailed description. Nothing can be more happy than the way in which the light is admitted, whilst it is also to be noted that the whole work is of stone, and that there is nothing in the design but what is essentially permanent and monumental in construction. The only other Spanish development is the introduction, to a very moderate extent, of features derived from the practice of the Moorish architects. ”

“ One singular characteristic of this style,—the horse-shoe arch—must be specially mentioned, as a new feature in construction; and its shape was, perhaps, suggestive of the dome, universal in the later Mohammedan architecture. Slender pillars, profuse decorations in painting, mosaic, and stucco, with elaborate lattice and trellis-work, and perforated battlements, so intricate as to resemble network, are the other points for remark in Moorish buildings. ”

“ The Moorish carpentry is very peculiar, and is constantly introduced in late Gothic work. Most of my readers have probably seen the ingenious puzzles which the Moors contrived with interlacing ribs in their ceilings at the Alhambra, illustrated with so much completeness by Mr. Owen Jones; these patterns are constantly used in Gothic buildings for door-framing; and examples of this kind of work may be seen frequently, and especially in towns—like Valencia and Barcelona—on the eastern coast. ”

“ Columns and pilasters, answering to nothing in the real structural scheme of a building, are disposed with no thought save for agreeable lines and rhythmical spacings. Thus they soon came to be used in many novel ways. They were set in pairs, stretched through several stories, embraced by pediments, and varied in countless fanciful ways. In this way the architecture of the Renaissance even more than that of imperial Rome, became a mere surface architecture differing fundamentally from all of the great architectural systems of ancient times, and of the Middle Ages. ”

“ The left side has the same ornamentation, with the difference that both the arches have seven lobules, because the wall has more frontage on this side: and another difference was that in the north-east corner it had an ornamentation of minute open-work instead of a shield. The wall opposite had the same distribution with a deep central arch and small arches at the side, with little columns in the Gothic style, which show already that the style is no longer purely Moorish, but a sort of base mixture of the decorative art of the East and the West. ”

“ It is, however, justifiable only on the principle, universally accepted by the architects of the Renaissance, that structural members may be used for ornamental purposes without any structural meaning or expression in harmony with the character of the building to which they are applied. But this is a principle which finds no support in any thoroughly noble system of architecture—Greek, Byzantine, or Gothic. Structural members may be used properly enough with a primarily ornamental purpose when they have a character in keeping with the real structural system in which they are used. ”

“ When the system was once developed in buildings of three or more aisles, it was natural to employ a simpler form of it in the construction of buildings of simpler plan. But it is unlikely that architecture like that of the Sainte Chapelle would ever have come into being had buildings of so simple plan only been required. It was the need of vast stone-roofed churches, such as could not be constructed without aisles, that stimulated the genius of the Gothic builders, and led to the remarkable results that fill us to-day with wonder and admiration. ”

“ Its lack of visible organic connection with the substructure makes it inferior in effect to the dome of Florence, where the structural lines of the edifice, from the ground upward, give a degree of organic unity, and the buttressed half-domed apses, grouped in happy subordination about the base of the drum, prepare the eye to appreciate the majesty of the soaring cupola as it rises over them. The dome of St. Peter’s has not the beauty of logical composition. Beauty in architecture may, I think, be almost defined as the artistic coördination of structural parts. ”

“ Peter's, an attic is interposed, but to spring a vault from an attic wall is an architectural barbarism; though it is perhaps no greater one than to spring it from an entablature, as the architects of the Renaissance had done from Brunelleschi down. In the small order of the aisles the entablature is simplified, and has only an architrave and cornice; while a member, like a diminutive attic, in retreat of the cornice, is interposed at the impost. ”

“ And while this remark may seem to ignore architecture as such, i.e. the fine art of beautiful building, it expresses a fundamental principle; for to build a house to live in, shaped for the needs of civilized human life, is to secure the primary condition of good architectural effect. And no domestic architecture in Europe has had more genuine charm for the eye than that of England of the Elizabethan time in its integrity, as it may be seen, for instance, in the greater parts of Haddon Hall; St. Johns, Warwick; Hambleton Old Hall, Rutland; North Mymms, Hertfordshire, and others. [2] ”

“ When the grouped lancets of the east end were replaced by one great mullioned and traceried opening, some truly magnificent designs were indeed produced, of which that of the Presbytery of Lincoln is perhaps the grandest; yet still are these great windows generally mere openings in walls. Rarely, if ever, in England do the rib of the vault and the archivolt of the aperture come one and the same member, as they do in Amiens Cathedral.
Such are the structural characteristics of early pointed architecture in England in so far as concerns the longitudinal bays. ”

“ And the effect is heightened, to a degree never before attained on this continent since the Mound-builders passed away, by the excellence of the domestic architecture which has entered into the construction of the dwellings of that vicinage, especially on Boylston Street and the adjacent avenues. Beauty, taste, and comfort are there found combined to a degree that promises much for the future of architecture in our country. The gargoyles, gables, cornices, and carvings one meets at every turn carry one quite back to the Middle Ages. ”

“ Every necessity becomes a motive of decoration. The roofs, the leading off of the water, the introduction of light, the means of access and circulation to the different stages of the building—even less important matters, such as iron-work, lead-work, ties, props, the means of warming and ventilation, not only are not concealed, as is so often done in our buildings since the sixteenth century, but are, on the contrary, frankly acknowledged, and contribute, by their ingenious combination and the taste which ever presides over their execution, to the enrichment of the architecture. ”

“ Thus we see that the adoption of the arched system of construction, unbiassed by any pre-existing laws of art, but aided only by the very rational desire to utilise the materials most abundantly provided by nature, led to two of the most important characteristics common to Romanesque and Gothic architecture, viz., the sub-ordinated arch and the clustered column, with the whole system of decoration derived from them; than which no two features can be pointed out which have been more richly fruitful of architectural forms the most original and beautiful. ”

“ Such buildings are perfect in design, and their perfectness is due to the knowledge and skill which were possessed by their architect-builders.
Gothic architecture grew like a plant, and reached its full development in the Perpendicular style, when the enthusiasm for church-building was at its height. Most of our village churches show signs of having been in part rebuilt during the period when the Perpendicular style flourished, and one of its most marked features is a lofty central or western tower, such as we see at Hedon, Howden, and Driffield. ”

“ Where the French architect kept his orders few, and his arch mouldings simple, confining his chief enrichment mainly to the sculpture of the capitals, the Anglo-Norman multiplies his orders, and subdivides them into wearisome lines, while he is often content to treat his capitals in the same way, denying them the enrichment of sculpture, and thus offering no relief to the endless linear elaboration. And this multiplicity of arch lines is still further increased by the invariable employment of hood mouldings with profiles, in the interior no less than on the exterior, of the drip-stone type. ”

“ The moldings of all the openings interpenetrate, and the whole arcade has the air of intricate ingenuity so usual in Moorish work. Again, in the triforium of the inner aisle we find Moorish influence,—the cusping of the arcade is not enclosed within an arch but takes a distinct horseshoe outline, the lowest cusp near the cap spreading inward at the base. We see Moorish tiles, we find Moorish cupolas as in the Mozarabic chapel, and Moorish doorways, as the exquisite one leading into the Sala Capitular,—here and there and everywhere, we suddenly come upon details betraying the Arab intimacy. ”

“ A building of the Renaissance is thus always the product of the fancy of a particular designer, as a building of the Middle Ages is not. But architecture of the highest excellence can hardly be produced by an individual working independently. The noblest architecture of the past has always been an evolution of a people, the joint product of many minds, and the natural expression of many conditions. ”

“ It is indeed far into devious paths that the architect is led by departure from the true principles of design.
A few remarks on the church architecture of the French Renaissance may be added here. It was natural that in church architecture the mediæval structural forms should largely survive. The French people could not adopt those semi-classic basilican forms of building that were natural to Italy. Thus, while now professing to despise their own noble Gothic art, they still retained through the sixteenth century the later Gothic structural system with no essential modification. ”

“ The blocks of stone are in many cases much larger than they appear, channels being cut upon them to simulate joints. The arch of one window, for instance, which by the rustication would appear to be made up of fourteen voussoirs, has in reality only three. The same lack of conformity of the simulated jointing with the true masonry joints is noticeable also in many parts of the façade of the Riccardi, and I know not how general this treatment may be in the architecture of the Renaissance. ”

“ When the need for feudal strongholds had passed, and the conditions of life in the open country had become peaceful, a type of domestic architecture arose in England which assumed its most characteristic form in the early Elizabethan Age. The best features of this architecture were of native growth out of the humbler forms of mediæval domestic building, the feudal castle, and the latest phase of Perpendicular Gothic. ”