DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20658#0189
ARCHITECTURE IN LANDSCAPE. 17,5
observed in the Saxon and Norman buildings, which form a narrow sharp pointed arch, whose
two sides meet in an angle of sixty degrees. Other authors have rather supposed that it was
brought to this country and other parts of Christian Europe from the Holy Land, by persons re-
turning from the Crusades. Of this opinion was Sir Christopher Wren, as well as many later
writers on the subject.
The modern Gothic architecture is distinguished by its lightness of construction, the boldness
of its elevations and its sections, and by the profusion, the delicacy, and often extravagant fancy
of its ornaments. Its characteristics are, its numerous and prominent buttresses, its lofty spires
and pinnacles, its large and ramified windows, its ornamental niches or canopies, its sculptured
figures of men and animals, the delicate lace-work of its roofs, the superabundance of ornaments
scattered over all parts of the edifice. To all which must be added, its peculiar clusters of small
slender pillars, and its pointed arches, formed by the segments of two circles intersecting each
other, resenbling two flat stones resting one on the other at the top. Hence it may be properly
called Pointed architecture.
A number of boughs placed in the ground opposite to each other, and tied together at the up-
per ends, as in forming a bovver, may also have contributed to suggest this arrangement of the
arches.
The celebrated Bishop Warburton has the following observations on the origin of the Gothic
architecture :—
" When the Goths had conquered Spain, and the genial warmth of the climate and the religion
of the old inhabitants had ripened their wits, and inflamed their mistaken piety, both kept in exer-
cise by the neighbourhood of the Saracens; through emulation of their service, and aversion to
their superstition, they struck out a new species of architecture, unknown to Greece and Rome,
upon original principles, and ideas much nobler than what had given birth even to classical
magnificence.
" For this northern people having been accustomed, during the gloom of paganism, to worship
the deity in groves, a practice common to all religions ; when their new religion required covered
edifices, they ingeniously projected to make them resemble groves, as nearly as the distance of
architecture would permit: at once indulging their old prejudices, and providing for their pre-
sent conveniencies, by a cool receptacle in a sultry climate.
" With what skill and success they executed the project, by the assistance of Saracen archi-
tects, whose exotic style of building very luckily suited their purpose, appears from hence that no
attentive observer ever viewed a regular avenue of well-grown trees, intermixing their branches
over head, but it presently put him in mind of the long vista through the Gothic cathedral; or
ever entered one of the larger and more elegant edifices of this kind, but it presented to his ima-
gination an avenue of trees. This alone is what can be truly called the Gothic style of building.
" Under this idea of so extraordinary a species of architecture, all the irregular transgressions
of art, all the monstrous offences against nature disappear; everything has its reason, every
thing is in order, and a harmonious whole arises from the studious application of means proper
and proportionate to the end. For could the arches be otherwise than pointed when the work-
men were to imitate that curve which branches of two opposite trees make, by their insertion
with one another ? or could the columns be otherwise than split into distinct shafts when thej''
were to represent the stems of a clump of trees growing close together?
* On
r
observed in the Saxon and Norman buildings, which form a narrow sharp pointed arch, whose
two sides meet in an angle of sixty degrees. Other authors have rather supposed that it was
brought to this country and other parts of Christian Europe from the Holy Land, by persons re-
turning from the Crusades. Of this opinion was Sir Christopher Wren, as well as many later
writers on the subject.
The modern Gothic architecture is distinguished by its lightness of construction, the boldness
of its elevations and its sections, and by the profusion, the delicacy, and often extravagant fancy
of its ornaments. Its characteristics are, its numerous and prominent buttresses, its lofty spires
and pinnacles, its large and ramified windows, its ornamental niches or canopies, its sculptured
figures of men and animals, the delicate lace-work of its roofs, the superabundance of ornaments
scattered over all parts of the edifice. To all which must be added, its peculiar clusters of small
slender pillars, and its pointed arches, formed by the segments of two circles intersecting each
other, resenbling two flat stones resting one on the other at the top. Hence it may be properly
called Pointed architecture.
A number of boughs placed in the ground opposite to each other, and tied together at the up-
per ends, as in forming a bovver, may also have contributed to suggest this arrangement of the
arches.
The celebrated Bishop Warburton has the following observations on the origin of the Gothic
architecture :—
" When the Goths had conquered Spain, and the genial warmth of the climate and the religion
of the old inhabitants had ripened their wits, and inflamed their mistaken piety, both kept in exer-
cise by the neighbourhood of the Saracens; through emulation of their service, and aversion to
their superstition, they struck out a new species of architecture, unknown to Greece and Rome,
upon original principles, and ideas much nobler than what had given birth even to classical
magnificence.
" For this northern people having been accustomed, during the gloom of paganism, to worship
the deity in groves, a practice common to all religions ; when their new religion required covered
edifices, they ingeniously projected to make them resemble groves, as nearly as the distance of
architecture would permit: at once indulging their old prejudices, and providing for their pre-
sent conveniencies, by a cool receptacle in a sultry climate.
" With what skill and success they executed the project, by the assistance of Saracen archi-
tects, whose exotic style of building very luckily suited their purpose, appears from hence that no
attentive observer ever viewed a regular avenue of well-grown trees, intermixing their branches
over head, but it presently put him in mind of the long vista through the Gothic cathedral; or
ever entered one of the larger and more elegant edifices of this kind, but it presented to his ima-
gination an avenue of trees. This alone is what can be truly called the Gothic style of building.
" Under this idea of so extraordinary a species of architecture, all the irregular transgressions
of art, all the monstrous offences against nature disappear; everything has its reason, every
thing is in order, and a harmonious whole arises from the studious application of means proper
and proportionate to the end. For could the arches be otherwise than pointed when the work-
men were to imitate that curve which branches of two opposite trees make, by their insertion
with one another ? or could the columns be otherwise than split into distinct shafts when thej''
were to represent the stems of a clump of trees growing close together?
* On
r