DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7595#0017
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
5
not practised now by our first-rate artists, but is
shunned by them as monstrous and barbarous, being
void of all order, and rather deserving the name of
disorder and confusion. In their buildings, which
are so numerous that the face of the earth is infested
with them, we see doors ornamented with slender co-
lumns, and twisted like vines, incapable of supporting
even the lightest weight. On every face of these
buildings, has been placed such a swarm of little
tabernacles, one upon the top of another, with so many
pyramids, and points, and leaves, that, so far from
appearing likely to last, it seems impossible they
should be able to bear their own weight; and they
look more as if cut out in paper, than formed of
stone and marble. These works have so many
projections, breakings, brackets, and twinings, that
every thing is crowded and disproportioned to itself;
and one thing is heaped upon another to such a
height, that a door is often seen to reach to the very
roof.
" This mode of building was invented by the Goths;
for the ancient edifices being destroyed, and the ar-
chitects killed in the wars, those who remained
masters of the country constructed buildings in this
5
not practised now by our first-rate artists, but is
shunned by them as monstrous and barbarous, being
void of all order, and rather deserving the name of
disorder and confusion. In their buildings, which
are so numerous that the face of the earth is infested
with them, we see doors ornamented with slender co-
lumns, and twisted like vines, incapable of supporting
even the lightest weight. On every face of these
buildings, has been placed such a swarm of little
tabernacles, one upon the top of another, with so many
pyramids, and points, and leaves, that, so far from
appearing likely to last, it seems impossible they
should be able to bear their own weight; and they
look more as if cut out in paper, than formed of
stone and marble. These works have so many
projections, breakings, brackets, and twinings, that
every thing is crowded and disproportioned to itself;
and one thing is heaped upon another to such a
height, that a door is often seen to reach to the very
roof.
" This mode of building was invented by the Goths;
for the ancient edifices being destroyed, and the ar-
chitects killed in the wars, those who remained
masters of the country constructed buildings in this