Triumphal arch

“ The Triumphal Arch, which stands close to the monument, was also erected by Julius Cæsar, to celebrate his great victory over Vercingetorix. It is the earliest Roman triumphal arch outside Italy, and there are probably only two in Rome that are earlier. ”

“ The arch is in a good state of preservation in spite of the many dangers it has passed through. In the Middle Ages one of the de Baux family, who was also a Prince of Orange, turned the triumphal arch into a{255} fortress, and the sculptures on the east front suffered much damage. The Prince evidently treated the great arch much in the same way as his family did the rocks of Les Baux. He altered and built round it staircases and rooms, and erected a great tower over the attic, making it the watch-tower or donjon of a fortress that has vanished centuries ago. ”

“ It encloses a mass of ruins conspicuous in which are a fine triumphal arch, the colonnades of two streets, a gymnasium, &c. A stadium and a theatre lie outside on the south. The remains of the acropolis fortifications are very interesting, including roads and ditches hewn in the rock; but beyond ruins of two churches and a fine tower built by Thoros I. there are no notable structures in the upper town. ”

“ It enabled them to rear vast edifices with the humblest materials, to build bridges, aqueducts, sewers, amphitheatres, and triumphal arches, as well as temples and palaces. The merits of the arch have never been lost sight of by succeeding generations, and it is an essential element in the magnificent Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Its application extends to domes and cupolas, to floors and corridors and roofs, and to various other parts of buildings where economy of material and labor is desired. ”

“ Below, the ceilings of the arch and corridors are brilliant from concealed lights placed within them.
Court of the Universe
Triumphal Arch, The Rising Sun
The triumphal arches which by night gain in majesty and mysterious power, by day have the added beauty of the color manipulation and decorative treatment, which is exceedingly rich and varied.
The twisted columns of Sienna marble which flank the arch, two on either side, are composite, mingling Corinthian and Ionic elements. Each column is crowned with a sculptured figure, representing the "Angel of Peace" by Leo Lentelli. ”

“ The principal buildings are situated on the right or east bank of the ravine. They consist of a Byzantine fortress, theatre, forum, triumphal arch, a large temple, and innumerable other buildings too much ruined to admit of absolute identification.
The first of these was originally of Roman construction. The regular and careful masonry of that people can be recognised in some few places. ”

“ It shows two naked angels holding a large turnip, from which springs a tall column with two horrible female monsters at the base, and a horned satyr at the top, holding long garlands.
The marvellous “Triumphal Arch of Maximilian” [Pg 89] is composed of ninety-two blocks, forming an immense woodcut ten and a half feet high and nine feet wide. It shows three great towers, under which are the three gates of Praise, Nobility, and Honor and Power, with the six chained harpies of temptation, and two vigilant Archdukes in armor, and figures holding garlands and crowns. ”

“ For two centuries artists lived on nothing but this kind of work. It needed events of some very extraordinary character to cause the production of any monument of real sculpture.
Fig. 274.—Restoration of a Roman Triumphal Arch, with its Bas-reliefs.
In the sixth century the cathedrals of Rome, Trèves, Metz, Lyons, Rhodez, Arles, Bourges, and the abbeys of St. Médard at Soissons, St. Ouen at Rouen, and St. Martin at Tours, are mentioned as remarkable; and yet the walls of these edifices were nothing but bare stone, without either ornament or sculpture. ”

“ Men in their haughty ambition have builded much larger structures. They have erected towers, pyramids, obelisks, spires, monuments, and triumphal arches, which have commanded the admiration of their builders and of their fellow-men in every part of the world; but every principle of their masonry and architecture is an imitation of that in the humblest spear of grass. ”

“ A flight of steps leads up to it, through a deep and gloomy, but magnificent arch. Great gates of brass, rich and delicately wrought, turn heavily upon their hinges, as if proudly reluctant to admit the feet of common mortals into this most gorgeous of sepulchres. ”

“ To learn that these very monuments have been turned to base uses by barbarous prince-bishops—the arch converted into a fortified Château de l'Arc, the theatre into an outwork of the main fortress—adds impressiveness to their mutilated splendour, awing one with the image of a whole reconstructed from such fragments. ”

“ Pile on pile of massive columns lay in ragged majesty about him, and bewildered his senses with their unnumbered towers. Ruins, ruins, ruins, as far as the eye can trace the broken plain. Palaces, fortresses, temples, mosques, harems, tombs, obelisks, and massive battlements lie hurled together in undistinguished profusion, while here and there the porch of some lofty building, or some imposing arch, still breaks the line of the horizon. One pillar stands in the plain, whose summit is two hundred and forty feet above the ground. Near this gigantic shaft are the ruins of the palace of Aladdin. ”

“ And golden statues 'neath the high arcades;
A holy palace built by magic hand
With wondrous architecture, portals grand,
And aurine turrets piled to dizzy heights,
Oh, how its glory Izdubar delights!
Beneath majestic arcades carved, they pass,
Up golden steps that shine like polished glass,
Through noble corridors with sculptured walls,
By lofty columns, archways to the halls
Of glories, the bright harbinger of fanes
Of greater splendor of the Heavenly plains.
Beneath an arch of gems the King espies
A form immortal, he who death defies. ”

“ Nothing in Nature ever moved me more than the first view of that magnificent arch. With something of the proportions of a cathedral roof it rises above you in massive grandeur, showing beyond, through the opening, a line of sky, and then another cavern-like arch. ”

“ Never, perhaps, were such permanent and forcible memorials of the past as the Arch of Titus in Rome, the Pont du Gard in the south of France, and the Porta Nigra of Trèves, visited and gazed upon with warmer interest or a deeper sense of their value. We all feel the power that is exerted over us by the ruins of great Castles and great Abbeys. ”

“ The lofty towers, like ponderous obelisks, truncated—the tall archway recessed between them—the frieze of shields and colonnettes above it—the second arch soaring over all, a gallery, it may be, whence to annoy the foe—the venerable masonry overgrown with moss, or dark with the breath of ages—form a whole which carries the mind most forcibly into the past. ”

“ The walls are of equal elevation, and of a more than ordinary thickness for any structure to stand the brunt of war, being twelve feet in solidity. The interior of the place, which seems to have been one enormous chamber or hall, is covered with lime, stones, and other fragments of masonry. No remnant of any sculptural ornaments or inscription was to be seen. At the southern angle of the great arch within the city walls, on a commanding rise of ground, stands a ruin of a stronger character; the massiveness and form of the work proving it to be the remains of a fortress. ”

“ This arcade of heavy columns carrying absurdly disproportionate arches is their only motive, and applied inside between aisles and nave, and outside in successive stories rising one above another. As the masons begin better to understand their art, the span of the arch increases, though a large arch for some time does duty merely as a discharging arch, and has smaller arches beneath and within it. ”

“ The ridiculous sculpture on the face, the figures blowing trumpets, and, above all, the group on the summit, which the tongue of man cannot describe, so utterly hideous is it, destroy the noble lines of the arch, if any one is so imprudent as to approach near it. ”

“ For the identity of those in whose honour the Arch of Triumph and Mausoleum of St.-Rémy were raised puzzles antiquaries as much as does that of the individual for whom the pyramid of Egypt was built. Vain effort, originating in the weakness of our nature, to preserve the memory of that which was dear to us, and which we would fain believe will insure the reverence of ages unborn for that which we venerated! ”

“ These are gone, but there are still left the royal tombs, the choir stalls, the pulpit, and three beautiful carved altar-pieces in the cloister.
The royal tombs are both practically alike. In each the king lies under a great round arch, on a high altar-tomb, on whose front, under an egg and tongue moulding a large scroll bearing an inscription is upheld by winged children. The arch is divided into three bands of carving, one—the widest—carved with early renaissance designs, the next which is also carried down the jambs, with very rich Gothic foliage, and the outermost with more leaves. ”

“ The hills that once were covered with rich forests of oak are bare and bleak; the cathedral is in ruins; the churches are crumbling walls and heaps of stones; the ground is strewn with fragments of sculptured crosses and broken pillars; and amid this wreck of a world are mingled in strange confusion the tombs of saints and princes and the graves of peasants. Still stands the round tower in lonely majesty, like a sentinel of heaven, to watch for ever over the graves of God’s people. What a weight of awe falls upon us amid these sacred monuments! We speak not, and scarcely breathe. ”

“ In its deep, dark arch, as in a black frame, is set a vista of dazzling whiteness, plastered tombstones, pillars, and obelisks huddled into irregular groups, with here and there a [108] figure hewn in fair white marble soaring on outstretched wings, and everywhere a scintillation as of molten metal—the colourless, intolerable glare, to which the fierce sunlight fires the corrugated zinc of the roofs protecting the monuments. ”

“ In the foreground is the ruins of an old temple, with its lofty pillars finely displayed in shadow above the summits of the horizon;—in the middle distance the battle is dimly discerned through the driving rain, which obscures the view; while the back ground is closed by a vast ridge of gloomy rocks, rising into a dark and tempestuous sky. The character of the whole is that of sullen magnificence; and it affords a striking instance of the power of great genius, to mould the most varied objects in nature into the expression of one uniform poetical feeling. ”

“ But what remains of this great temple? A wide heap of ruin; the interior of which, the columns and walls having fallen outward, is a flowery field, in which lie some fragments of those huge giants that once supported the roof. One of these is tolerably entire: the curls of his hair form a sort of garland: it lies with its face upward, and when I stood by it, my own head scarcely reached as high as the brow of the statue. It is composed of several pieces of stone, as are the columns of this temple, and most of the others of Agrigentum. ”

“ Through long ranges of Gothic pillars and arches, some displaying all the exquisite workmanship of their clustered shafts, while others are hung with shadowy festoons of ivy, or lightly decorated with its waving tendrils, the eye passes; and, for a moment arrested by the lofty arches rising in the middle of the structure that formerly supported the tower, it glides to the grand window at the termination of the ruin. ”

“ Within this sublime temple, unsurpassed in Gothic art, where every pavement slab is worn by knees more than by footsteps, where every starry window has thrown its jewel lights on generations of believers, one would almost choose to dwell forever. One looks half enviously at recumbent alabaster bishops and kneeling marble knights, even at dim grotesques, who have rested in the heart of that grave beauty, in that atmosphere of prayer and chant, so long. Let these stone figures troop out into the troubled streets and toil awhile, and give the rest of us a chance to dream. ”

“ The immense thickness and giddy height of the walls, the enormous strength of the massive towers, the great extent of the building, its gigantic proportions, frowning aspect, and barbarous irregularity, awaken awe and wonder.
The recollection of its opposite old uses; an impregnable fortress, a luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place of torture, the court of the Inquisition; at one and the same time, a house of feasting, fighting, religion, and blood, gives to every stone in its huge form a fearful interest, and imparts new meaning to its incongruities. ”

“ There are but few trees in that landscape,—scattered groups of the ash and the plane,—to break the prospect. For [323] a long time the stately ruin remained in view,—its huge bulk and serrated outline, relieved against the red and gold of sunset, taking on the perfect semblance of a colossal cathedral, like that of Iona, with vast square tower, and chancel, and nave: only, because of its jagged lines, it seems in this prospect as if shaken by a convulsion of nature and tottering to its momentary fall. Never was illusion more perfect. ”

“ You are building for eternity. You are rearing temples of living stones which shall survive all the changes and chances of earth and time, and look sublimely down upon the world's catastrophe. Up! up with your immortal campanile! It is compacted of imperishable gems, cemented with gold from the mines of God. No marble sculpture may adorn its niches and cornices; but angel forms shall walk its battlements in robes of living glory. No hollow metal may swing in its vaulted loggie, sending sweet echoes over the distant hills, and charming the song-birds to silence along the flowery Val d'Arno ”

“ Ruins heaped on ruins, rows and rows of columns with great irregular gaps where Time and man have performed the work of destruction; huge pillars rising singly and in groups, scattered masses of enormous stones, broken arches and gateways and porticos, walls of immense strength encircling what was once the city, and in the back ground the great Temple of the Sun, these form the picture. ”