face corbel illustrated in Fig. 146. Examples such as this are rare ;
it is one of a series of little sculptured heads in a facade at Haberstadt
in the Hartz Mountains. The door knocker shown in Fig. 147 is from
the same district. It is more typically German, the human face being
introduced with a humoj^r which is more Gothic than Renaissance ;
it is best expressed by the term " quaint," which is one that can rarely
be applied to Classic or Renaissance work. Something of the same
spirit is also to be traced even in armorial bearings, as exemplified in
Fig. 148 ; and again there is a suspicion that this is quite as much
Gothic as Renaissance in its feeling, the truth of the matter being
that Germany never took kindly to the architectural Renaissance of
Classic ideas, at any rate until modern times.
Fig. 158 — Statuary in West Doorway, Reims
Cathedral.
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Fig. 164 — Face in Hollow Moulding, Henry VII. 's
Chapel, Westminster Abbey.
Fig. 160 — Carving on Rood-Screen, Southwell
Minster.
Facing page 74.
x^
Kic. 159 — I'art of North Porcli, lioui'scs Cat licilial.
Facinu ixujc 75.
Ornament with a Human and Animal Basis.
The Gothic School
CHAPTER VII
Ornament with a Human and Animal Basis. — The Gothic
School.
The Gothic school of animal carving came into existence long before
the introduction of the pointed arch in architecture. The sequence
is, in fact, unbroken from the time of the Romanesque buildings of
Byzantine type in the south of France onwards. In the earher cen-
turies there seems to have been no attempt at sculpture as an independ-
ent art ; the animal representations were architectural enrichments
in their proper sense, and nothing more, except that they were also
generally intended to convey a meaning. There v/ere frequently
symbohcal or scriptural scenes, but not invariably so ; the difficulty
of classification is extreme, and the origin often exceedingly obscure.
This, however, may be said with certainty, that the earlier examples
so far partook of Byzantine character as to be not so much true carvings
as surface work, with a background cut down, leaving the face of the
stone to form the face of the carving as in all other Byzantine ornament.
This has already been exemplified in the capital from the west front
of Notre Dame at Poitiers, illustrated in Fig. 20, where the general out-
line of the capital is retained, although the carving is that of a grotesque
bird. The same sort of thing is frequently found in Engand. One of
the earher examples is illustrated in Fig. 149, which shows a capital from
the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, carved about 1080 A. D. It
is of the usual Norman cushion form, and the carving on it is grotesque
and crude and difficult to decipher. The fact that the background is in-
cised suggests a Byzantine origin, at any rate for the craftsmanship ;
but otherwise httle can be said. It is impossible, in fact, to tell what
the actual origin was of this particular type of work, though there
exists a considerable amount of it both in France and England. It
11
78 THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT
is also noticeable that the type does not vary greatly over a large
geographical area. In spite of architectural differences, the work
at Canterbury might almost as well have been executed in mid-France,
at any rate as far south as Poitiers. Sometimes it is more crude,
at other times it is more highly finished, A crude example is that
from the Church of St. Etienne, Beauvais (Fig. 150), of a range of
corbels to the eaves, which in some instances act as cushion capitals
to buttress shafts, converted into grotesque human heads by the
simplest of rough craftsmanship. The sketch was made before the
restoration was commenced which is now proceeding, and in course
of which a large number of similar corbels are being carved so precisely
like the old ones in motive and in craftsmanship that in a few years'
time it will be impossible to detect which are old and which are new.
Fig. 151, which illustrates the south doorway of Barfreston Church
in the County of Kent, shows how this flatly-treated animal carving
was frequently employed over a considerable surface. It was used in
this example, and in many others in England and the nearer parts
of France, to enrich the main entrance to the church, but in other
places similar carving was often carried over the whole front. It will
be noticed that not only are the capitals enriched in a manner generally
similar to that employed in Fig, 149, but that the various arch rings
are also carved with figures in the same way (but more highly finished)
by incising the background below the flat or rounded surface as the
case may be ; while the tympanum is again carved in the same style,
the central figure alone being more prominent and partaking more nearly
of true sculpture. Tympana such as this are found very largely in
English Norman churches. The only piece of projecting carving
upon the doorway is the keystone of the outer moulding ring, beneath
the flat ring which is enriched with the signs of the zodiac ; but higher
up in the same building, acting as a corbel-table, a series of carved
heads will be noticed, one or two of which are human (either natural
or grotesque), while others are the figures of animals ; thus bringing
into notice one of the characteristics of all Gothic ornament, that of a
playful fancy based upon natural objects with which the carver was
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(.Sketched by Mr. H. G. Lovell, A. H. 1.15. A.)
Fdvhiii pu'ie 7 9.
THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT 79
familiar. Amongst other heads the muzzled dog will be seen ; a
larger illustration of one from another part of the same building is
shown in Fig. 152, where it serves as the stop to a hood moulding, and
almost identical dogs' heads are to be found in work of the same date
in Northern France, as, for example, in the Templars' Church at Laon.
In the later work of the Norman period true carving more com-
pletely took the place of that which retained the surface of the stone ;
at the same time the animal representations became more varied and
in some instances more grotesque. There is, for instance, a good
deal of Scandinavian suggestion about the doorway from Kilpeck
Church in Herefordshire (Fig. 153), which is a well known example
of the richest Norman carving. It occurs sufficiently far in the west
of England for Irish influence to have been at work. There is, indeed,
a good deal about the grotesque heads, which form the label stop and
the capital, which suggests the Irish illuminated manuscripts, and we
may go so far as to say that in Herefordshire, which is distant from
that part of England which most completely felt the effect of the
Norman Invasion, there was retained a considerable amount of native
feeling which would naturally be to a large extent Celtic (as from the
Welsh and Irish), and Scandinavian, as from the Anglo-Saxon inhabi-
tants of the English counties. The arch is enriched, in addition to the
grotesques, by a series of natural heads which occur where the fox's
head is seen, no two being entirely alike. These again illustrate
what has just been said about the carvers having gone to nature
for their inspiration in many instances, while in others they allowed
their fancy and their belief in the marvellous to dominate their carving.
When the architecture of the pointed superseded that of the semi-
circular arch, foliage carving came into greater and animal carving fell
into less prominence than hitherto, particularly in England. The Byzan-
tine type of incised background disappeared entirely, and from this time
forward the animal carving was true carving and in many instances
might rank as sculpture. Like the foliage, it was generally of a
natural type ; it was natural in spirit even where the animals repre-
sented were of a purely imaginary character. In England almost
8o THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT
all the best which represented the human figure were mutilated at the
time of the great Civil War, though enough remains to indicate the
general type of work, as can be seen in the slight sketch of one of the
spandrils in Westminster Abbey, given as Fig. 154, which shows a
female figure and a dragon in the spandril and also a human head acting
as a stop to the hood moulding, all now considerably decayed. The
archaic or crude character of the earlier carving has given place to
the actual representation of the human figure and face, in correct
contour and with a fine appreciation of line, animals being introduced
not so much perhaps as pure architectural ornament, but as an incident
in the tale which was to be told by the spandril ; for in most instances
such groups as this have a more or less discernible meaning. That the
animal figure was, however, used occasionally as ornament alone is
clearly shown by Fig. 155, which illustrates one of the capitals in the
Chapter House at Lincoln Cathedral. The head in this instance, half
human, half canine, serves exactly the same purpose as one of the
lobes of foliage ; it was evidently just a freak upon the part of the
carver to turn his piece of stone into a head instead of a group of
leaves.
Fig. 156 is a French example of grotesque animal carving, showing
two strange gargoyles on one of the buttress terminals of Amiens
Cathedral. They are full of spirit but hideously ugly, constrasting
greatly with the sculptured figure of the Bishop on his pedestal above,
rendered as a pure piece of statuary. Another series of French
grotesques of the 13th century is illustrated in Fig. 157. These occur
in the spandrils of the small arcade in the jamb of the west doorway
of Notre Dame at Paris, and even in the smaller panels besides the door
itself. Each animal in this case is, however, much more recognizable,
and in one instance is replaced by a human figure in an extremely
natural attitude, grasping an axe. This little example, is, in fact,
full of carving which has an animal basis ; there are panels, for instance,
within the archway, each of which is a picture in stone. Similar pic-
tures are crowded all over the greater French cathedrals, Amiens, in
particular, being notable for them, to such a great extent that when
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[Facing page 80.
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Catliedral (sketela'd by Mr. I{. G. Lovoll, A.U.I.15.A.)
Vu:. 171 -l<
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Fiiciiiij jtiKjr SI
THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT 8i
Ruskin wrote of that building he entitled his book " The Bible of
Amiens,"
If this was one of the attributes of the early French Gothic carving,
it may be said that another was its statuesque character where the
figures were upon a large scale, such as those above the row of small
arches shown in Fig, 157. Somewhat similar figures are to be found
in the approaches to many of the great French cathedrals ; those in
the west doorway at Reims Cathedral, which belong to a somewhat
later period, that is, the fourteenth century, being illustrated in Fig.
158. Even in the days of the Roman Empire there was no draped
scuplture with such a fine flow of line as is possessed by these figures.
Instinct with a different spirit, it is quite equal to the best Greek
work. The faces have all the appearance of portraits (that is, of having
been executed from good models), but while the attitudes are natural
they are also sufficiently restrained and conventionalized to harmonize
with the surroundings. In the same illustration the row of small angel
figures in the door jamb will be noticed, the heads in all cases having
been knocked off, probably during the French Revolution. A similar
range of winged angels will be noticed in the outer arch rings of the
arcade in the north porch, Bourges Cathedral, shown in Fig. 159 ;
an example which is somewhat Spanish in type, with largely projecting
cusps, finishing with human heads. This sort of thing is rare in
France, but a few examples are even to be found in England, one of
which, from the rood screen of Southwell Minster, is shown in Fig. 160,
though without the greatly projecting cusp points of Bourges. As is
sufficiently indicated by the foliage carving, the work belongs to the
middle of the fourteenth century, and this would also be tolerably
evident from the character of the heads themselves, which now almost
always represent persons in the prime of middle life, especially where
portraiture has been attempted, as seems to have been frequently the
case. An example of this is shown in the now much destoyed stop
to the hood moulding of the west door of Merton Church, illustrated
in Fig. 161. The figures and heads of the thirteenth century were
generally of a younger and those of the fifteenth century of an older type.
M
82 THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT
The most prominent examples of statuary, as opposed to mere
decorative carving, in English work are the recumbent effigies upon
altar tombs, of which a large number exist, the great majority being
of the type shown in Fig, 162, which shows a crusader's tomb in St.
Saviour's Cathedral, Southwark ; that is, they represent armoured
warriors. Figures of this description are found throughout the whole
of the Gothic period, their date being indicated by their armour or by
the architectural environment in which they are found.
One of the most quaint uses of the human head for ornamental
purposes during Gothic times is that illustrated in Fig. 163. It
shows a sanctuary knocker, placed on the door of a great cathedral
and giving the right of sanctuary to any criminal who might succeed
in clutching it, when he would be immediately admitted. It will be
seen that the head is in the form of a mask, and that a person inside
could see through the eyeholes and converse with anyone demanding
entry. The occasional impatience of the pursuers is in the present
instance to be readily recognized by the bullet hole in the forehead,
showing that it was in use after the introduction of gunpowder. The
type of this face suggests that the work is of a late date, when again
the grotesque and ugly were replacing the beautiful.
Faces and figures are frequently found in small work of the 15th
century, and in many instances the grotesque feeling predominates.
Another small example of this is given in Fig. 164, which, as reproduced,
is about half full size ; it is one of a series of such small enrichments
in Henry VII. 's Chapel, Westminster, During all the later Gothic
period, subsequent to the Black Death in 1349, the human figure
was used greatly in small details, especially in the bosses where vault
ribs intersect, and more in England than on the continent. It was
also much employed in the form of statuettes in niches, but in no case
did the later statuary reach the excellence of the early work. Its
employment pictorially was, at this later date, more frequently found
in Germany than in either France or England. A small example of
this is given in Fig. 165, showing how the story of the Flight into
Egypt was illustrated in stone on one of the aisle gables of a church
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Fig. 172 — Pew in Ufford Church, Suffolk.
Facing page S2.
Fig. 17a — Doorway, PaddQesworth Church, Kent.
Fig. 174. — Column at Entrance to the Treasury of
Atreus, Mycenae. (British Museum).
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Fig. 177. — Stepped Gabh' a1- Yprcs.
Fig. 170. — Church Doorway, Salfonl I'rior. Wai-
wickshirc.
[Fuciiuj ija(/C S3.
THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT 83
at Brunswick. In South Germany, particularly in Bavaria, examples
are numerous and the figures crowded together, the tale being generally
much less easy to decipher than in this case.
Turning again to the consideration of carving with an animal
basis other than human, one finds that wherever there was Gothic
work there also was found an intense appreciation of the ordinary
forms of country life ; that is, the wild life of the fields. During the
whole of the fourteenth century, and even in work which is later in
date, the animal forms are generally perfectly true to nature and occur
in profusion. An example of about the year 1299 — that is, at the very
opening of what is known as the " Decorated " period — is shown
in Fig. 166. It is one of a series of small capitals in the wall arcade
in the Chapter House at Southwell Minster, and upon it wild hogs may
be seen feeding upon the acorns which have fallen from amongst the
oak leaves, of which the capital is principally composed. Another of
these capitals illustrates a hare being caught by two dogs, and varia-
tions of this same sort of things are simply innumerable, both in
stone and wood carving. It may be seen again in the much later work
of the staircase turret of St. Etienne, Beauvais, shown in Fig. 167,
where the crockets, instead of being bunches of leaves, are carved as
field mice set in various natural attitudes. Of course, it would be im-
possible to recognize the mice from the ground level ; the sketch was
made from the roof, which very few people would ever visit. In the
same way mice and rabbits are found in work executed nearly two
hundred years earlier at Amiens Cathedral, upon buttress terminals
which can only be inspected by going up upon the roof. A somewhat
more grotesque, but still exceedingly realistic example of a late date
is the donkey's head capital now lying on the grass outside the cathedral
at Dol, in Brittany, and shown in Fig. 168.
But if the animal carving remained realistic, it began in the
fifteenth century to also take on a pictorial character, not always of
religious significance, as had been the case invariably in earlier times.
It became now quite a common thing, for instance, to indicate the name
of the person under whom any particular work was carried out by means
84 THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT
of what is called a " rebus," and occasionally such would include an
animal form. An example is shewn in Fig. 169 from Norwich Cathe-
dral, the figure of a hart or stag lying down forming the rebus for Bishop
Lyhart. This work belongs to the fifteenth century, although it was
carved upon the stone which must have been inserted at a very much
earlier date, for all around is easily recognised as being Norman.
This same tendency to illustrate other than religious scenes in religious
edifices is shown in a great amount of the carving of the period just
previous to the Reformation, particularly in England. The fable of
the fox and the goose forms the subject of a well kno\vn cornice in the
vestibule leading to Henry VII. 's Chapel. A small portion of this is
shown in Fig. 170, the motive being repeated over and over again.
It will be noticed that in both of these cases, though the carving is of
an exceedingly late date, yet the animal figures are still represented
in a purely realistic manner. The general naturalistic idea had not
materially changed from the earliest to the latest Gothic days.
In France, however, there was a certain reversion to the grotesque
and the imaginary. Dragons and fabulous animals (such as that shown
in Fig. 171, forming a part of the enrichment on :i hollow moulding
in Beauvais Cathedral) are frequently found, while the rebus and the
fable appear but seldom. This carving must have been executed at
almost the same date as that shown in Fig. 170 ; and possibly even a
little earlier than most of the strange animals carved in wood which
are to be found in England also, as is illustrated in Fig. 172, showing
one of the pew ends in Ufford Church. 1 he exact date of this is not
known, but it bears indications of Renaissance influence in some of the
minor details, and may very well have been carried out subsequently
to the Reformation by workmen who still retained some of the tra-
ditional Gothic feeling, when dealing with animals at least.
If the Gothic spirit thus lingered in England, so also was it retained
in the animal carving of France. It will be noticed in the vampire of
Francois L, already illustrated in Fig. 140, and it is to be found in
combination with purely Renaissance carving in a good deal of the
chateaux building carried on during the reign of that monarch. The
THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT 85
best known and most prominent example is to be found in the row
of gargoyles at the Chateau de Blois (Fig. 173). They are waterspouts
from the eaves of the building, and are not led to, as in Gothic buildings,
by a pipe passing through a parapet ; but they are true gargoyles all
the same, or, at any rate, they acted as such originally, varying from
one another, grotesque and ugly, yet full of vigour and almost sug-
gesting living animals.
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Al>liey.
•Fig. 178 — Transept C4able, St. Etienne, Beauvais.
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[FaciiW page 86.
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Fig. 182 — Continuous fret pattern, Langlev Pari
Kent (c. 1800 A.D.).
Fig. 183 — Guilloclie on Door .lamb, I'alazzo di
Venezla, Rome.
Fig. 184 — Wimlow, Hotel Lallemande, Bourges.
I''IG. 186 — Kdward 1 he'Confcssor';
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Pomlp, Westminster
Faring page 87.
Ornament with a Linear Basis
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Fig 185 — Oak Door, St. Maclou, Rouen.
[Facing page 884
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Fig.
189 — Pilaster on South Front, Hatfield House,
Herts.
Fig. 188 — Corner of Brcitewcs and Schiih Strasse,
Halberstadt.
Fig. 191 — Rood Screen, St. Etiennc du Mont, Paris.
[ Faeinri page 89
CHAPTER VIII
Ornament with a Linear Basis.
One would naturally expect to find that whenever the human race
was in an elementary state of civilization any attempts at ornamenta-
tion would take lineal forms. This has not always been the case, for
there are many instances where primitive people have attempted
to represent the natural forms around them before they have adopted
other systems of ornamentation ; at any rate natural forms have been
developed into the most common and most beautiful ornaments, as
has already to a certain extent been traced. At other times primitive
rectilinear and curvilinear forms have asserted themselves strongly,
and have even been developed into something which is far from prim-
itive. The origin of most of these forms cannot be traced. There