INTRODUCTION xxi

The Architecture of the Middle Ages.¹ He was reading also Woods’ Letters of an Architect.² Points which he afterwards developed in The Seven Lamps were already occurring to him. Thus, it was during the tour of 1846, that Ruskin was struck by the system of intersectional mouldings, which he discusses at length in this book as a principal source of corruption in Gothic architecture (ch. ii. §§ 21 seq., pp. 87-99). At Chambéry (April 26) he notes in his diary “a house in the main street here, remarkable as an example of that peculiar domestic Gothic so common in Switzerland, and of which one of the marked features seems to be the intersection of the rib mouldings at the angles, which I consider very ugly.” At Châtillon-sur-Seine (September 23) he recurs to the subject:-

“The architecture all the way from Lucerne-and I suppose from Schaffhausen-here, shows a most distinct connection, here beginning to vanish in more grotesque and purely French form. I should call this architecture, generally, sectional or intersectional, its distinguishing character being that already noted ... [at Chambéry], that the mouldings, instead of uniting with or arising out of each other, cut each other and form inelegant interstices, or are themselves violently truncated as in my examples taken at Lucerne and Sursee.³ Another most interesting example occurs in the piers of the bridge of Aarburg ... [reference to a sketch-book], where the sharp angles which meet the current are brought up to square full fronts on which the bridge is superimposed by brackets, composed of three tiers of semi-circular bands or mouldings, whose extremities show their truncations exactly in the manner of the beams of a châlet, from which the idea seems taken.⁴ At Besançon the style appears in great perfection-more elegant than in Switzerland, but quite as vicious. A grand circular arch near the Post Office is most remarkable both for its side niches, and because its huge crockets are represented as going through its lateral pinnacles ... [reference to a sketch]. This penetrability is, however, one of the bad characteristics of flamboyant architecture in its last extravagances.”

At Chambéry (April 26), after the notes on the domestic architecture referred to above, he continues:-

“I suppose the cathedral here to be of the same period; its front is remarkable for its hard, square, valueless mouldings, and for the general awkwardness of all its forms. The carving, though somewhat too close

¹ See below, pp. xl., 87, 95.

² See below, p. 206.

³ See the drawing made at Sursee (Fig. 3 in Plate IV.) and the reference to it on p. 97.

⁴ See below, ch. ii. § 28, p. 97.

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