Romanesque architecture

“ ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE AND ORNAMENT. Romanesque is the name given to the architectural style developed by the Western barbarians who overran the Roman Empire, after their partial civilisation, when they had learned the art of building. The style arose chiefly from the copying of Roman buildings and their remains, with some added features of Byzantine buildings. ”

“ CHAPTER VI ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE The term Romanesque is given to the period between the beginning of the 9th and the middle of the 12th century, but there was no real break in the continuity of the evolution of Christian architecture in Europe from the time when that art first freed itself from Pagan influence till it reached its noblest development in the Gothic style. ”

“ A Romanesque or an Early English cathedral is not to be studied as though all that the architect had to do was to take stone and mortar and set up a building for a given purpose. The development of the architecture of Greece, its passage into the architecture of Rome, the growth of Christian ceremony and symbolism, are only part of the elements which went to form the state of things in which the genius of the builder had to work out the requirements of the moment. ”

“ CHARACTER OF THE ARCHITECTURE. Romanesque architecture was pre-eminently ecclesiastical. Civilization and culture emanated from the Church, and her requirements and discipline gave form to the builder’s art. But the basilican style, which had so well served her purposes in the earlier centuries and on classic soil, was ill-suited to the new conditions. Corinthian columns, marble incrustations, and splendid mosaics were not to be had for the asking in the forests of Gaul or Germany, nor could the Lombards and Ostrogoths in Italy or their descendants reproduce them. ”

“ The Romanesque is an architecture of inertia, with arches heavily weighted by great masses of wall, and with broadly contrasting masses of light and shade. It does not depend for its effect upon intellectual quality beyond a rigorous sense of simplicity, or upon refinement of conception or detail, but rather upon size, picturesque mass, and staccato light and shade. ”

“ But skill came with experience, and with advancing civilization and a surer mastery of construction came a finer taste and greater elegance of design. Meanwhile military architecture developed a new science of building, and covered Europe with imposing castles, admirably constructed and often artistic in design as far as military exigencies would permit.
CHARACTER OF THE STYLE. The Romanesque architecture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Western Europe (sometimes called the Round-Arched Gothic) was thus predominantly though not exclusively monastic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in the eleventh century men began to strike out new ways in architecture, and, without wholly forsaking146 the old Roman models with their round arches, they devised new local styles in different parts. Thus one form of what is called Romanesque architecture arose in Italy, another in Southern Gaul, another in Northern Gaul, and so on. ”

“ The architectural character of the Romanesque buildings varies extremely with the districts in which they are erected; but, generally speaking, it may be described as picturesque, and even sometimes romantic; the appearance of towers, prominent transepts, and many smaller decorative features serves to render the exteriors telling and varied, though often somewhat rude and primitive. A solid and somewhat heavy character distinguishes the interiors of some varieties of Romanesque buildings—such, for example, as our own Early Norman ”

“ It is by no means necessary for an architect to revert to these experiments because he does not sympathize with the expression of strained intensity and “otherworldliness” which the Gothic architects attained, and prefers the more robust, more massive, more mundane aspect of the Romanesque monuments that preceded the great cathedrals. ”

“ All other varieties of architecture may be broadly divided into two classes, the one consisting of buildings of transitional character, and comprising all organic and progressive types of Romanesque, and the other composed of styles made up of mixed elements not in process of organic fusion. The first architecture of the second class is that of imperial Rome with its offshoots, the Christian Roman and the numerous subsequent forms of the basilican type, and the second is the architecture of the Renaissance. ”

“ The round-arched series of styles embraces the buildings of the Romans from their earliest beginnings to their decay; it also includes the two great schools of Christian architecture which were founded by the Western and the Eastern Church respectively,—namely, the Romanesque, which, originating in Rome, extended itself through Western Europe, and lasted till the time of the Crusades, and the Byzantine, which spread from Constantinople over all the countries in which the Eastern (or Greek) Church flourished, and which continues to our own day. ”

“ Pointed architecture is not, in the strict sense, a style distinct from that which is round arched; for pointed arches in apertures do not much differ structurally from round ones. Gothic architecture differs from Romanesque far more fundamentally than by the use of pointed arches in place of round arches, or by the substitution of one decorative system for another. ”

“ The most striking outward feature in all Gothic architecture is, that it is composed of pointed arches, as in Romanesque that it is in like manner 209 composed of round; and this distinction would be quite as clear, though the roofs were taken off every cathedral in Europe. And yet, if we examine carefully into the real force and meaning of the term “roof” we shall perhaps be able to retain the old popular idea in a definition of Gothic architecture which shall also express whatever dependence that architecture has upon true forms of roofing. ”

“ Through them architecture and sculpture were carried into foreign lands, France, Spain, Germany, and England, and there developed into new and varied styles according to the exigencies of the climate, and the tone of the people. The flat roofs, horizontal architraves, and low arches of the Romanesque, which suited a warm climate, gradually changed as they went northward into the pointed arches vii and sharp gables of the Gothic; the steep sloping lines being a necessity in a land where snow and rain were frequent. ”

“ These shafts are thus only decorative features employed precisely as were the engaged columns in the early arched constructions of the Romans, and the buildings are throughout, notwithstanding their pointed arches, the same in principle as those of round arched Romanesque design. They consist merely of massive walls with timber roofs over their central aisles; hence there are no lateral pressures calling for a Gothic buttress system, and they have no organic framework in which their strength resides. ”

“ BOUT the year 1000 a new spirit animated the art of the builder in France. That rebirth, to which has been given the name Romanesque, held sway for a hundred and fifty years, and had reached its apogee when, in mid-XII century, it was superseded by the architecture we call Gothic. Gothic architecture did not spring up like a mushroom. ”

“ The truth is, that the somewhat excessive solidity of the work—as heavy and ponderous in substance as the grandest Romanesque—is singularly noble when combined as it is here with very considerable height in the columns and walls, and with fine pointed arches, early traceried windows, and good sculpture. ”

“ This is the style of which we should first treat when attempting to trace the history of Mediæval architecture. It is a mistake to imagine Pointed architecture to be severed by a great gulf from the Romanesque—the Pointed Gothic from the Round: it is its legitimate offspring, or rather itself in a more advanced{51} stage of its development. The change from the round-arched to the pointed-arched Gothic is no change of essential principles ”

“ Oriental manufactures, are to be traced in the Romanesque ornaments, and were the origin of many of those most familiar to us, actual architectural features of Classic form, such as capitals, do not seem to have been very directly copied, excepting where the remains of antique buildings were at hand to offer models. The Romanesque capitals of earlier date are, in many cases, of types belonging to no other style, though in others they betray a distant descent from the Roman ”

“ Architecture was reborn, all the ravelled threads from Rome, Constantinople, Ravenna, Syria were gathered up and knit together, and though few authentic works from{29} among the myriads of the Emperor’s creation still remain, we know from what we have, and chiefly the royal chapel at Aix, that the result was the restoring once more of a line of continuity after the vast vacancy of the Dark Ages, and the initiation of a new vitality that, after the second Dark Ages, was to serve as the energising power that brought Romanesque art into existence and made possible the great glory of Gothic. ”

“ The spire is the simplest part of the Romanesque or Gothic architecture, and needs least study in order to be felt. It is a bit of sentiment almost pure of practical purpose. It tells the whole of its story at a glance, and its story is the best that architecture had to tell, for it typified the aspirations of man at the moment when man's aspirations were highest. ”

“ We also find the jambs of doorways, windows (Fig. 200) , and chancel arches, losing the square form extending through the thickness of the walls, which characterises the earlier examples (like those of our own Anglo-Saxon buildings) , and becoming divided into separate orders, with decorative mouldings, and shafts with caps and bases, and thus exhibiting the most important elements of the advanced Romanesque and “Gothic{23}” styles. These features increase in distinctness till we reach examples known to be contemporary with our own Norman works, and culminate in the charming Chapel of St. ”

“ On either side of the west front of many Romanesque buildings, more rarely also from the point of junction of the transepts and nave, rise lofty square or octagonal towers, the earlier with flat, the later with more or less steeply pitched roofs, that gradually developed into the tapering spires so characteristic of the Gothic style. ”

“ We have now rapidly sketched the various steps by which Roman architecture was gradually transformed, from being in its decorative features an imitation of the classic trabeated style, into an embodiment of the true principles of arcuated or genuine stone construction, as exhibited in the fully developed Gothic of the thirteenth century. ”

“ In the front is a plain, but noble portico of the Tuscan order, executed in the most masterly manner; the columns are massy, and the intercolumniation large, which has an air of noble simplicity, that if compared with the most ornamented Gothic structures, shews the superiority of the Roman architecture in its plainest form, over the finest barbarism. The building, tho’ as plain as possible, is happily proportioned; the walls are of brick covered with plaister, and the corners of stone; the roof is flat, and though of great extent, is supported by the walls alone, without columns. ”

“ In consequence of this invention, the Romans erected a greater variety of fine structures than either the Greeks or Egyptians, whose public edifices were chiefly confined to temples. The arch entered into almost every structure, public or private, and superseded the use of long stone beams, which were necessary in the Grecian temples, as also of wooden timbers, in the use of which the Romans were not skilled, and which do not really pertain to the art of architecture. An imposing building must always be constructed of stone or brick. ”

“ The whole history of Roman art is that of a transition from the external trabeated style, with its horizontal entablature, which was common to the early races of Greece and Italy, to the complete development of the internal arched architecture, which was the final outcome of Roman constructional forms. ”

“ The horizontal cornice, so characteristic of Greek and Early Roman architecture is of frequent occurrence, the round arch was long retained in combination with pointed highly-pitched roofs, and spires are rare, whilst the beautiful groined vaulting, the flying buttresses, and the exquisite window-tracery, that lend so great a charm to the cathedrals and churches of France and England, are very seldom met with. ”

“ Under these conditions a new architecture was developed, founded upon the traditions of the early Christian builders, modified in different regions by Roman or Byzantine influences. For Rome recovered early her antique prestige, and Roman monuments covering the soil of Southern Europe, were a constant 156 object lesson to the builders of that time. ”