July-December 1896

Ube 2!*r<Mft+ VOL. VI. JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1896. NO. 1 OPTICAL REFINEMENTS IN MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE.* of the Report Brooklyn Institute Survey, May-October, 1895. I. of the mediaeval understand why the deficiency of these cathedrals is so much a matter is ADMIRATION qualities so complacently tolerated of course nowadays that, all in modern buildings at once by archi- persons inside the pale of European tects and by the general public. civilization are expected to feel it and When Viollet le Due said "Our to for give expression to it, consequently streets are deserts thought ; they they all do it. How far this admira- have all the monotony of the desert tion is a matter of fashion and how without its compensating loneliness," far it is of the coldness of really felt is, however, an open he was thinking question. Historic associations and their strict symmetry, the monotony the romance connected with them will of their mathematical regularity and and carry people a long way in West- of their mechanically repeated minster or at Canterbury. The mechanically executed details. mediaeval cathedrals are, generally, Our modern architectural crime, for larger buildings than their modern which cries aloud to heaven repro- the copies, and in so far are calculated to bation, is deficiency ot picturesque. house are excite admiration by this fact of their An old barn or an old farm in a thousand times more interesting dimension, which is, of all elements York Post Office and a building, the most obvious and the than the New thousand times more interesting than most easily understood. It is, how- other which it ever, extremely doubtful whether the a good many buildings so fashionable to sneer at. finest qualities of the mediaeval cathe- is not quite of the is drals are those which generally excite This deficiency picturesque of our the warmest admiration. Otherwise largely an inevitable result but that is no reason it would be extremely difficult to social conditions, of Professor were taken Mr Tohn W. McKecknie, under direction *The photographs used in illustration by sect.ons an. and are its property. The plans, Goodyear, for the Brooklyn Institute, expressly to illustrate the subject under Professor Goodyear's direction, from surveys sup- drawings have been prepared by Mr. John W. McKecknie, ported by the Brooklyn Institute. RECORD COMPANY. All rights reserved Copyright, 1896, by THE ARCHITECTURAL Vol. VI. 1. 1. THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD. and criticism are ineffective why it should not be recognized weapons them. To our whole deplored. against change In an old cathedral every capital, social fabric and to abolish the divis- ion of which every gargoyle, every finial, every labor, has separated the window, every statue, was an inde- architect from the master-mason, pendent creative effort of the indi- which has separated the designing vidual artisan. The designs were not clerk in a pent-up office from the passed over to the workman from an stone-cutter on his scaffold this is the architect's office. The workman him- impossible task which the critic must self created the design. set himself, who wishes to revive the Hence the infinite variety of virtues of mediaeval building. It is a mediaeval detail which is one grand fact of deep significance that William source of the picturesque character of Morris is a Socialist, that the works mediaeval building. Variety was an of Ruskin are brimful of economic inevitable result when every workman theories. Let these theories be good did his own designing in detail, from or bad, wise or foolish, the fact will the mere fact that many different stand that every true artist of our and the is also at heart a social workmen were employed ; day reformer, individual workman varied his own and it may be that he knows it best detail from one form to the next cor- who says the least about it. responding one for the same reason But there are other differences be- that he was himself the inventor of it. tween a mediaeval cathedral and a Hence creations like the fagades of modern church, besides the differences San Martino, at Lucca, or of San Pietro, in the matter of picturesque details. at Toscanella, to name two examples How rarely do we find any exact sym- out of hundreds, are practically impos- metry in those apparently correspond- sible things in modern art. Our ing parts which belong to the design facades are designed by an architect, of the mediaeval church as a whole. not only as a whole, but also as regards How frequently do we find variety in their individual parts. Even where the design of two corresponding spires the effort occasionally appears in and other irregularities of arrange- modern work, to manufacture artificial ment. Uniformity, even in the main irregularity in the original design, this features of an old cathedral, is rather manufactured irregularity will never an exception than a rule. have the spontaneous and unpremedi- It is the habit to explain such irregu- tated variety of the old creation. larities as the result of construction at Generally speaking, even the effort is different periods. But this habit of wanting. Given the effort, we still explanation really begs the question have to meet the difficulty that the as to how they have arisen. A cathe- stone-cutter, who works after the pat- dral was frequently two or three cen- tern which has been manufactured for turies in building, it is true, but it is him and not by him, will never give absurd to say that the facade of Dinan his cutting the sparkle, the force and or the choir of Mainz (before the the originality which distinguish the recent restoration) showed Gothic handiwork of the artist artisan of the pointed work on top of Romanesque Middle Ages. We have an analogous simply for this reason. If the senti- case in the contrast between the ment asking for uniformity had existed, inferiority of our modern marble could not the later architects have statues, which are rarely cut by the finished the building in the style pre- sculptor himself, and those more vital vailing when the building was begun ? ones of older art, on which the sculptor Admitting that one spire of the fagade himself did the cutting. at Tours is later than the other, as it It appears, when these facts are ex- naturally might be, is that any reason amined, that the admitted inferiorities why the second spire should not cor- of modern architecture are largely respond to the first, if the desire had inevitable results of changed social existed to make it correspond ? and that conditions, preaching and The fact is simply this, that the REFINEMENTS IN MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE. habits of successive architects corre- chitecture has been most sponded to the habit of potently any one given emphasized and most and that eloquently de- architect, any given architect scribed Mr. of the Middle by Ruskin, especially Age habitually intro- under the of heading the Lamp of Life duced any variation into his m the design Seven Lamps of Architecture. which was suggested either his by He has attributed it to a conscious fancy or of made for by changes plan purpose in some definite some definite cases, which cause. If, for instance, he has specifically described, while he had finished one spire and had a freely admitting that there is no hard chance to improve the of its design and fast line to be drawn in the ex- fellow, either because more and money amples he has cited between artistic more work on it were available, or be- and which cause praiseworthy work, achieves he discovered a defect which the element ot " life," or of the pic- might be avoided, or an improvement turesque, simply because it has not set which be might added, there was up a mistaken standard of mathemati- in the ethics of his nothing profession cal regularity and that work which or in the of his time which prejudices was consciously and would such definitely planned antagonize changes. to avoid the coldness of strict To understand an old cathedral we symmetry. must with the union in one begin per- There is, therefore, an element of son of the artist and the artisan. The irregularity often found in mediaeval from the picturesque variety springing building which corresponds very creative of the individual capacity closely to the style of decorative de- mason and the individual stone-cutter sign in modern Japanese art as re- ran all the The through building. gards the philosophy of the irregular architect himself was a master- simply quality. Clearly the artistic spirit of /. he was himself a mason, <?., mason the Japanese decorative art con- by profession. He was not isolated sciously scorns the trammels of mathe- in an office, he was at once architect matical symmetry, but it would be dif- and It builder. is well known that the ficult to say, in a multitude of cases, first in man Europe who ever proposed whether the decorative design is pur- to separate the profession of architect posely irregular or whether it is so and builder was the Florentine Leon simply because the more difficult and Battista Alberti (fifteenth century). yet inadvisable methods of applying The first man in England who ever mathematical measurements to deco- compelled his wood workers and ration are not practiced in Japan. stone workers to copy his designs, for It is rather difficult for the average detail, and to give up making their taste of modern European and United own, was Inigo Jones (seventeenth States civilization to realize the inter- century).

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