92 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

becomes always bolder, and in the buildings of the greatest times, generally simpler. Thus at San Zeno and the duomo of Verona, the only delicate decorations are on the porches and lower walls of the facades, the rest of the buildings being left comparatively plain; in the Ducal Palace of Venice the only very careful work is in the lowest capitals;¹ and so also the richness of the work diminishes upwards in the transepts of Rouen, and facades of Bayeux, Rheims, Amiens, Abbeville,* Lyons, and Nôtre Dame of Paris. But in the middle and later Gothic the tendency is to produce an equal richness of effect over the whole building, or even to increase the richness towards the top; but this is done so skilfully that no fine work is wasted; and when the spectator ascends to the higher points of the building, which he thought were of the most consummate delicacy, he finds them Herculean in strength and rough-hewn in style, the really delicate work being all put at the base. The general treatment of Romanesque work is to increase the number of arches at the top, which at once enriches and lightens the mass, and to put the finest sculpture of the arches at the bottom. In towers of all kinds and periods the effective enrichment is towards the top, and most rightly, since their dignity is in their height; but they are never made the recipients of fine sculpture, with, as far as I know, the single exception of Giotto’s campanile, which indeed has fine sculpture, but it is at the bottom.

The facade of Wells Cathedral seems to be an exception to the general rule,² in having its principal decoration at

architecture cannot exist when this respect cannot be calculated upon, as it would be vain to put fine sculpture within the reach of a population whose only pleasure would be in defacing it.

* The church at Abbeville is late flamboyant, but well deserves, for the exquisite beauty of its porches, to be named even with the great works of the thirteenth century.

¹ [For a comparison of the capitals in the lower arcade with those in the upper, and remarks on the adjustment of the latter to their distance from the eye, see Stones of Venice, vol. i. (Vol. IX. p. 292).]

² [For another reference to Wells, see Seven Lamps, Vol. VIII. p. 12.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]