Flemish relics; architectural, legendary, and pictorial, as connected with public buildings in Belgium (1866) (14596392579)

Identifier: flemishrelicsarc00step (find matches)
Title: Flemish relics; architectural, legendary, and pictorial, as connected with public buildings in Belgium
Year: 1866 (1860s)
Authors: Stephens, Frederic George, 1828-1907
Subjects: Architecture
Publisher: London, A.W. Bennett
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute



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of the photograph is good of itskind, while the shafts of the piers which support the cloisters areonly less unfortunate in Art than their caps, which last, as thereader will observe, have been wrought in so bungHng a fashion asto be actually too narrow for the mouldings of the arcade that restupon them. The absurdity of this defect is so great that onemight almost be tempted to fancy the vaulting of the cloister, andthe piers had origins of different periods ; the thing would beunderstood if it were possible that the latter are but makeshifts tosupport the former in place of better works. This quadrangle isinfinitely the least unbeautiful portion of the palace ; another andlarger quadrangle is completely surrounded by an arcade com-prising sixty stumpy pillars of such remarkably hideous form as tobe uglier than the so-called balusters which so often figure inmodern parapets, and have not unhappily been compared to foot-mens calves. The arabesques carved on these pillars arc not only
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LIEGE. 175 intensely stupid in conception—wliicli is intolerable in fantasticwork—but uncouth to the last degree. How wilfully and need-lessly the architecture of this enormous edifice was degraded, maybe seen by those who will examine the style of the pretty Hotel deVille at Audenaerde, which follows here, and was designed twentyyears later than the monstrosity of Liege. The palace of thebishop is now used as a Palais de Justice. The famous Cathedral of St. Lambert at Liege once stood infront of the palace of the bishop; like the Church of St. Donat atBruges, it was destroyed in the Eevolution at the end of the lastcentury, after having been one of the wealthiest and most splendidchurches in Europe. In front of it, the Wild Boar of Ardennescaused the naked body of the Prince-Bishop to be cast (Monstrelet).In the basilica which formerly occupied its site, Grimoald, son ofPepin, was slain; Lothaire 11. was crowned there by PopeInnocent II. in 1131, on which occasion St. Bernard was