Medieval architecture, its origins and development, with lists of monuments and bibliographies (1912) (14597360580)

Identifier: medievalarchitec01port (find matches)
Title: Medieval architecture, its origins and development, with lists of monuments and bibliographies
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Porter, Arthur Kingsley, 1883-1933
Subjects: Architecture, Medieval Architecture, Medieval Architecture
Publisher: New Haven, Yale University Press
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Connecticut Libraries



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agreat mosaic picture, and about the same time others were madefor the church of Germigny-les-Pres. But the art was alreadyin its decline, and after the IX century mosaics ceased to beexecuted. Such, then, are some of the more prominent characteristicsof Carolingian architecture — that strange, disordered, contra-dictory art, whose bleak winter of five centuries binds togetherthe autumn of ancient art, and the sunny springtime of Gothic. Coupled arches had already been in use in Byzantine architecture, as in the triforium ofS. Vitale, where even tripled arches occur. Indeed, the motive may almost be dated back tothe Pantheon, where the ruches are separated from the rotunda by columns bearing an archi-trave. The triforium of S. Vitale was reproduced at Aachen, whence the motive spread toGermigny-les-Pres, Montier-en-Der, and, in fact, to all northern Europe. The Gothic trifo-rium is thence logically derived. The Carolingians, I believe, were the first to apply the idea towindows. 164
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ACHIEVEMENTS OF CAROLINGIAN ART Orderly and consistent progress during tliis period did not ex-ist; but when architecture emerged from the CaroHngian periodin the XI century, it was in a form and character totally differ-ent from that in which it had entered it in the VI century. Howradical this transformation had been will be evident on comparingthe nave of Montier-en-Der (111. 100) — the type of the mosthighly developed CaroHngian church — with any of the EarlyChristian or Byzantine basilicas. The change effected hadbeen partly constructive, partly destructive. That the con-structive work, although sporadic and contradictory, was never-theless vital and availing, has already been shown; but the greatmission of CaroHngian architecture was not creation but de-struction. Five centuries of barbarism are the only conceivable forcethat could have had the power to free Western architecturefrom the trammels of Roman formula — that colossus that hadbestridden the civilized world from t