Canopy (architecture)

“ On each face there is at the bottom—above the interpenetrating bases—a classic medallion encompassed by Manoelino twisting stems and leaves, and higher up two statues one above the other. Of these the lower stands on a Gothic corbel under a renaissance canopy, and the upper, standing on the canopy, has over it another tall canopy Gothic in style. Higher up the piers rise up to the vault with many pinnacles and buttresses, and between them, above the arch, are other figures in niches and two angels holding the royal arms. ”

“ The Piscinas, or water-drains, and niches, or tabernacles for images, are often very rich, with canopies and open tracery. These objects commonly shew the chief beauties of this style; they are always on the south side of the altar, the locker or ambry for keeping the chalice, &c., is usually on the north side. The pediment, or straight-sided canopy, is much used in this style over doors, sedilia, piscinas, and monuments. ”

“ Were the canopy more defensible than it is in glass, it would still have monopolised far too large a place in the scheme of mediæval and Renaissance design. We owe largely to it, in connection with the gradually increasing claims of figure work, the all but extinction of pattern glass. Figure work is practically implied by the canopy. Occasionally, indeed, architecture has formed the whole motif of a window; but the case is so rare that it does not count. Once in a while there may be excuse, and even occasion, for almost any device. ”

“ One form of imitation is not much better than another; but here, at all events, there is nothing which in the least competes with the surrounding architecture; and it will scarcely be denied by any one who takes the least interest in ornament, that design of this kind is vastly more amusing than the dull array of misplaced pinnacles which often did duty for ornamental detail in Gothic shrinework. A German version of a canopy which ceases almost to be a canopy and becomes more like arabesque, is given on page 350. ”

“ The panels behind the upper tier are divided by twisted Manoelino shafts bearing Gothic pinnacles, and the upper part of each panel is enriched with deeply undercut leaves and finials surrounding armillary spheres. Above the panels, except over the end stalls where sat the Dom Prior and the other dignitaries, and which have higher canopies, there runs a continuous canopy panelled with Gothic quatrefoils, and having in front a fringe of interlacing cusps. ”

“ The wall above the capitals is divided by pinnacles; between each of which is a niche containing a subject sculptured in high relief under a canopy. The detail of the whole is of the richest kind of middle-pointed, and altogether very similar in the amount of work and delicacy of design to the arcades round some of the richest of our own buildings, as, for instance, round the Chapter-house at Ely. ”

“ The canopies are hexagonal, supported on shafts, which have clustered niches above their proper capitals; the stalls of the Chancellor and Treasurer, which are at the extreme east on either side of the choir, have winged seraphs in their capitals. The niches have ogee canopies bowing forward in front of their true gables, with various small heads and faces on the hip-knobs. A second story of the canopy contains a niche, square in plan, but set lozenge wise, covered with a lofty pinnacle, and flanked by open screenwork with high flying buttresses, nearly all of which have lost their crockets. ”

“ Stone was sometimes used for these canopies, but wood was more common. These wooden canopies and brackets are often very fine pieces of joinery and wood-carving. The canopy sometimes takes the form of a kind of big shell, the ornaments and pattern being finely moulded, and the cornice being deeply and boldly cut. These canopies were painted, and the tops covered with lead to protect them from the weather. As you walk along streets of an old town, which has not been too much modernized, you will be almost sure to see some specimens of this kind of work. ”

“ The straight upward sweep of his mullions made easy an effective adjustment of the narrow canopy-framed niches, and left the artist little to do but elaborate the more modest sentry-box of the Decorated period. This he did in a very artistic and pleasing manner. The signs of development are easily distinguishable, and chief among them are the elaboration of the architectural detail of the canopy (by increasing the number of pinnacles [Pg 139] and drawing them in relief instead of flat) , and the completing of the frame effect by adding elaborate pedestals below the feet of the figures. ”

“ The enormous value of the mass of white afforded by the canopy, as a setting for colour, has reconciled us too readily to its use. Why not this mass of white without pretended forms of masonry, without this paraphernalia of pinnacles? The architect alone, perhaps, in his heart likes canopy work, and would prefer it to any other kind of ornamental device. When he plans a window, or directs its planning, forms of architectural construction occur to him naturally. Supposing him to be an artist (as we have perhaps a right to expect him to be) he produces a fine thing ”

“ For some time the idea was simply and slightly expressed, and though there was always a painfulness in finding the shafts of stone, which were felt to be the real supporters of the canopy, represented as of yielding drapery, yet the beauty of the angelic figures, and the tenderness of the thought, disarmed all animadversion. But the scholars of the Pisani, as usual, caricatured when they were unable to invent; and the quiet curtained canopy became a huge marble tent, with a pole in the centre of it. ”

“ The light from All Souls’ College, here given, is an example of a very usual Perpendicular arrangement. About one half its entire length is occupied by a figure enshrined, as it were, in an architectural niche. The base of the canopy is about equal in height to the width of the light. The shafts are broad enough to emphasise the independence of the light. The pinnacles of the canopy extend into the window head. A point or two of background colour, as though one could see through, are ingeniously introduced into the canopy and its base. ”

“ The fourteenth century canopy is, at first at least, always in pure elevation, attempts at perspective not being found till close on the end of the century. Plate XXV. shows both of the forms which are most commonly found, that with a single big crocketted gable and arch spanning the opening, and that with three small ones. ”

“ Canopies make no more beautiful screens of silvery-white than, say, the Five Sisters at York. Intrinsically they are less interesting than pattern work. They give less scope for arranging subjects variously, just as one will; and they allow less range for the fancy of the artist. The most interesting canopies, and among the most effective, are those Early Renaissance picture frames (French, German, or Italian) which, whilst just sufficiently suggesting something near enough to architecture to be called canopies, are really little more than arabesque. ”

“ Even when its canopy is actually supported by the wall behind, it is apparently supported by two columns in front, perfectly formed with bases and capitals:— (the support of the Northern niche—if it have any—commonly takes the form of a buttress) :—when it appears as a detached pinnacle, it is supported on four columns, the canopy trefoliated with very obtuse cusps, richly charged with foliage in the foliating space, but undecorated at the cusp points, and terminating above in a smooth pyramid, void of all ornament, and never very acute. ”

“ Though, however, the English fifteenth century craftsmen did not abandon the canopy, they profoundly modified it and made it far more pliant and adaptable. Plates XXXIV. and XXXV. from York will give a better idea of the canopies of the early fifteenth century than any description. It will be seen that the single overpowering crocketted gable and wall-sided tower of the fourteenth century has disappeared, and in its place we have a 217 froth of pinnacles, windows, buttresses and niches all in white and yellow stain, on a background of colour. ”

“ Those in England are generally part of the arrangement of the arch mouldings of the door, and form, as it were, the hood-moulds to them, as at York. The former are above and independent of the door mouldings, and frequently support an arch with a tympanum, above which is a triangular canopy, as in the Duomo at Florence. Sometimes the canopy and arch project from the wall, and are carried on small jamb shafts, as at San Pietro Martire, at Verona. There is an extremely curious canopy, being a sort of horseshoe arch, surmounting and breaking into a circular arch, at Tournai. ”

“ Each of these lights measures 3 feet 6 inches across, and is divided again by the thick iron frame-bars into roughly square panels, each of which contains a subject from the Bible. The canopy work which, in the hands of a fourteenth century artist, would have filled half the window space with its towering spires, is here reduced to a small many-pinnacled canopy just filling the head of each light (where it would have been an awkward shape for a subject) , a narrow shafting forming a border down the side, and a very shallow flat arch dividing each subject from the one above. ”

“ The screen is flanked on each side by a magnificent composition of niche work, ranging above two small doorways leading to the vestry, the arches of which are obtuse, and the architraves entirely formed of mouldings. Above the point of the arch of each door case is an hexagonal canopy, highly enriched, and supporting the pedestal of a large and similarly formed niche above it, crowned with a like canopy, which rises above the rest of the screen, and occupies a portion of the wall on each side of the window. ”

“ The human figure was very short and broad in proportion to them, and when it was a case of a group the resulting shape was shorter still, so the canopy offered a convenient way of elongating the design; but the fourteenth century 138 designer developed it, as may be seen in the illustrations, out of all reason, filling it with fantastic detail—angels looking out of the windows, birds perching on the pinnacles, and miniature figures standing like statues in the niches of it—till it quite reduced the figures below it to insignificance. ”

“ This canopy, or covering thus made, was raised about twenty braccia above the ground, and was supported by very strong ropes attached to numerous iron stancheons, which are still to be seen around the church of San Giovanni, in the façade of Santa Maria del Fiore, and in the different houses which surround that Piazza. Between one rope and another also ran cords which assisted to support the canopy; and the latter was so carefully provided, more particularly towards the extremities, with ropes, cords, linings, and safeguards of every kind, that nothing better could possibly be imagined. ”

“ The Early canopy goes for nothing as design. Its one merit is that it is inconspicuous. One could wish that the Decorated were equally so. There is, as a rule, no shutting your eyes to its mass of overpowering shrinework. When, by way of exception, it chances to be modest it is sometimes more interesting—as where it is scarcely more than a cusped arch, or where, as at Strassburg, it takes the form of an arcaded band across the window, in which are series of little demi-figures. At Cologne Cathedral also sundry saints are pigeon-holed in this way. ”

“ In the clerestory at Freiburg is a window in which the serried saints appear at first sight to be simply framed by lines of pale purple; but on examination these resolve themselves into a simple architectural elevation, with even a hint of unsuspected shadow in it. The date of that example is 1512; and canopies, not to go back to Græco-Roman decoration, begin with the beginning of Gothic. It is adduced, therefore, to show, not the origin of canopy work, but how inevitably something of the sort occurred. Its immediate source is clearly imitation. ”

“ The precautions taken to prevent the fall of the whole building, which was apprehended from the almost tottering state of the dome, have necessitated the erection of such a quantity of scaffolding, that it is no easy task to gain an uninterrupted view of its majestic pillars, of the delicate and light foliage of its capitals, and of its proud and triple canopy. ”

“ The earliest examples of anything in the nature of a base that I know of are at Wells and in the great east window of Gloucester Cathedral, where the topmost pinnacle of each canopy spreads out into a sort of bracket supporting the next figure above, while the shafts at the side are prolonged upwards into the canopy of that figure, an arrangement suggestive of Perpendicular work. ”

“ In German work one great brassy canopy will frequently be found stretching right across the several lights of the window, over-arching a single subject. This triptich-like composition will occupy, perhaps, two-thirds of the height of the window. The background behind the pinnacles of this canopy may be either of one colour or of geometric diaper in mosaic (elsewhere characteristic of the Early period) , finished off by a more or less arbitrary line—a cusped arch, for instance—above which is white glass. ”