C. ENLART L'ART GOTHIQUE ET LA RENAISSANCE E N CHYPRE 11.LUSTKK DE 34 PLANCHES ET DE 421 FIGURES Ouvrage publié sous les auspices du Ministère de l'Instruction publique et des Beaux-Arts. TOME PREMIER PARIS KU \ KSI LlîOl'X, ÉDITKl R 28, RUE BONAPARTE, 2S 18!)!» Title page of the 1899 edition. CHAPTER I CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT OF WESTERN ARCHITECTURE IN CYPRUS l ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE Romanesque architecture had undoubtedly made its presence felt in Cyprus before the western invasion; that was in 1191, whereas Roman- l esque architecture had been brought from the coast of Syria, where it Now the Bazaar Mosque. was already being practised in the twelfth century by the Romanesque architects who have left us in Beirut a beautiful church in the finest 2 1 Les églises de la Terre French style, not to mention those noteworthy Romanesque churches Sainte (Didron, Paris, 1860). 2 in Palestine studied by the Marquis de Vogiié. 3 (Ed. Note.) On the churches One proof of the source from where the Romanesque style was im- of the Karpas believed by ported into Cyprus can be derived from the situation of the buildings; Enlart to be Romanesque see further: G. Jeffery, A De- its influence can only be traced in the Karpas Peninsula, that elongated scription of the Historic promontory which stretches in the direction of the coast of Asia Minor Monuments of Cyprus and approaches it closely. Seeing that in the course of the twelfth (Nicosia, 1918), pp. 258-60; R. Gunnis, Historic Cyprus century Cyprus was cut off from its cultural roots it is reasonable to (London, 1916), pp. 167 accept that the inhabitants had no better means of obtaining church and 414; G. Soteriou, Ta architects than to bring them from the neighbouring continent.3 Paleochristianika kai Vyzan- tina Mnimia tis Kyprou, The apse and the transept of the Byzantine church of Rizokarpaso, Praktika tis Academias chief town of the Karpas, appear to derive from an architecture which is Athinon, 1931;A.H.S. Me- as much Romanesque as Byzantine, as shown by the billet moulding gaw, 'Three Vaulted Basilicas in Cyprus', Journal of Hel- which frames the windows of the apse. lenic Studies, vol. 66, 1948, pp. 48-56 and ib. 'Byzantine Architecture and Decora- tion in Cyprus: Metropolitan 2 or Provincial', Dumbarton GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE Oaks Papers, No 28, 1974, pp. 59-88; A. Papa- georghiou, L 'art byzantin de As soon as he took possession of Cyprus in 1192 Guy of Lusignan began Chypre et l'art des Croisés, making strenuous efforts to populate the island with western settlers.4 Report of the Department of He took care also to provide himself there with artists capable of con- Antiquities, Nicosia, 1982, structing and decorating castles, palaces and churches for him. Some pp. 217-26. 33 RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE isolated features of Nicosia Cathedral appear to belong to the French style of the second half of the twelfth century and are without doubt the earliest evidence of these first works. From 12095 until 1280 Gothic art produced some fine works in Cyprus: Kyrenia Castle, the east end of Nicosia Cathedral, the church at Bellapais, the Great Hall of St. Hilarion and part of the doorways of SS. Peter and Paul in Famagusta. All these buildings are in an excellent style, drawing their inspiration particularly from the north of France with some differences imposed by the climate and by the need for economy. Their construction also presents certain old-fashioned features, but the decoration, at least that done in the thirteenth and at the beg- inning of the fourteenth century, does not fall behind its French models. From roughly the middle of the thirteenth century until about 1350, Gothic art in Cyprus draws its inspiration from models in Cham- pagne, and to some extent in the south of France. This second period produced works of great value without a single There is general agreement trace of archaism such as, from 1260 to about 1320, St. George of the among later writers that they Latins at Famagusta, the upper parts of the nave and the porch of are Byzantine nor Roman- St. Sophia at Nicosia and finally, Famagusta Cathedral which was begun esque. Megaw, who in 1948 (JHS, vol. 66, pp. 48-56) in 1300, interrupted for only a few days in 1311 and finished before the thought that they were middle of the fourteenth century. A small chapel in Famagusta also originally built in the sixth deserves mention as a work of the same class, and in the first ten years of or seventh century and re- constructed with stone- the fourteenth century there was also built the pretty chapel of Our vaulted roofs probably in the Lady of Tyre, strikingly original with its flattened proportions and wide late tenth century, stated in windows. Under Hugh IV (1324-1339) there took place the construc- 1974 (Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 28, p. 76, note tion of the cloisters and the adjoining buildings at Bellapais; St. Francis, 80), 'the writer's initial the Carmelite church and the castle at Famagusta, St. Catherine and the preference for assigning Yeni Djami at Nicosia belong to the same period. The construction, the these vaulted reconstructions to the tenth century was plans and the general proportions are in no way inferior to the examples abandoned in the light of quoted earlier though the details of the ornaments are no longer so later discoveries'. beautiful. A third period began when, about 1360, these models inspired imitation. The influence of Champagne had by then disappeared, being gradually supplanted by that of the Midi. At Famagusta the beautiful See Mas Latrie, Hist, de Chypre, vol. I, p. 9. churches of St. George of the Greeks, SS. Peter and Paul, St. Anne and the Nestorian church, the Franciscan church at Paphos, the church at Stazousa, the church of the Holy Cross at Tochni and St. Nicholas at i.e. the date of the laying of the foundation stone Nicosia, represent the respectable beginnings of this period, one which is of the existing Nicosia greatly inferior to its predecessor. Finally at the end of the fourteenth Cathedral. and in the fifteenth century there is a fourth period which is very much inferior. In it there was a return to the structural designs and decorations A little earlier the church of of the Romanesque period while at the same time all sorts of fourteenth- St. Nicholas in Nicosia, century motifs remained in use and grew progressively more degenerate. Gothic throughout, had The church at Morphou, which is Gothic in its stone-work and in its been given a central lantern borne on pendentives and sculpture but Byzantine in its form and in its vaulting, is the first of this covered with a dome. type to be completed and the best specimen of the genre.6 The church 34 GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE of St. Sozomenos is a smaller example of it and the church at Trimithi a poverty-stricken miniature version. A whole series of small churches in Famagusta belong to the same period. Before long, with the arrival of the Renaissance, there is another element to be added to these more or less clumsy mixtures of a Gothic art increasingly cosmopolitan in inspiration, degenerate Byzantine art and reminiscences of the Romanesque. In the first Gothic period in Cyprus the proportions of the buildings are good but rather squat; the ornamentation is applied soberly but in a grand style. It seems likely that it had been the intention, in principle, to give Nicosia Cathedral a low pitched roof, and even a sort of triforium, but that idea was almost immediately given up in favour of a system of flat roofs as in some buildings in Spain, in particular Barcelona Cathedral. This avoidance of pitched roofs involves the absence of a triforium which gives to the churches that squat appearance which is sometimes reproduced in buildings with a single nave such as Our Lady of Tyre. The upper parts of St. Sophia are small in proportion to the lower parts as at Notre Dame in Rheims, Bourges Cathedral and Uzeste (Gironde). The following period shows the same relative proportions between the lower and the upper storeys of the towers of the façade of St. Nicholas at Famagusta; but this building can rank as a model of fine slender proportions. The same qualities can be found again to an eminent degree in Famagusta at St. George of the Latins and at Bellapais in the refectory, which provides a curious contrast with the crushing though quite imposing heaviness of the church. The elaborateness and the high finish of the ornamentation does not exclude a great purity of taste in its choice and discrimination in its distribution. There is one strange peculiarity: in the nave of St. Sophia at Nicosia as at St. Nicholas in Famagusta the exterior is much richer in sculpture than the interior and the upper parts are more ornate than the lower. The third period is marked by great ponderousness and monotony, a less interesting and more parsimonious ornamentation and a simplified construction which pays little attention to elegance, but with all that goes a remarkable understanding of the proportions of the building as a whole, of the general effect and of the art of the mason if not of that of the architect. The last period has little to its credit beyond the beauty of the masonry and the solidity of the construction. Architecture has relapsed into infancy, ornamentation is drab, the proportions have once more become squat but have ceased to be harmonious; their heaviness and clumsiness recall buildings erected in the fourteenth century in Greece and in the fifteenth century in Rhodes.