Nationalism and Culture (88 page)

Among the peoples of the northern countries the Romanesque reached a special perfection. By the prolonged tempests of the migrations of peoples and by the Roman world these peoples had been aroused and stimulated to higher creativeness. For them Christianity, which among the Romans had already sunk into corruption, had a very special significance in that it enabled them to reestablish then* community of opinion, which had suffered many a shattering blow during the storm and stress of the great migrations and the endless wars. They developed in their own way the principles of a Christian art of building which they had received from the South, and although much of the crude and awkward still clung to their work at first, they betrayed a healthy originality which held within it much of greatness.

The essential feature of Romanesque architecture consists in the supplanting of the flat-roofed, column-supported basilica by the vaulted oblong, in which pillars more and more displaced columns, which at the last found application only as adornment. By the use of the cross-vaulted basilica there developed gradually a new type of room, which

displays a definite tendency to movement upward. The further the development proceeded, the more strongly evident became this feature. The arches became constantly steeper, the framework became constantly more slender. The tower was an essential part of the structure, which more and more grew to be integral with it and, viewed from without, gives it a distinctive character. This development at last flowed into the Gothic and at the same time reached its end. Nothing more could be done in this direction. Gothic was, in fact, the final consequence, the finished product of that principle of vertical construction, which in this latest phase of its development fairly tore itself away from the earth and with impetuous impulse soared aloft. It is stone turned to ecstasy, which beholds the heavens and thinks to escape from every earthly bond.

And yet it would be a mistake to wish to see in the Gothic merely an expression of religious feeling; for it was at the same time the result of a definite form of social life, of which it was in large measure the symbol. Gothic is the artistic precipitate of a culture which in a certain measure presented a synthesis of personal initiative and mutual cooperation. In an appendix to Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences the English scholar, Willis, remarks concerning this form of the Christian style of building:

A new decorative construction had arisen, which did not conflict with and disturb the mechanical construction, but aided it and made it harmonious. Every member, every buttress, became a supporter of the load; and by the number of the supports which assisted one another and the resulting sharing of the weight the eye was satisfied of the stability of the structure, despite the peculiarly meager look of the separate parts.

Gustav Landauer, who in his excellent essay Die Revolution took the above citation from Kropotkin's splendid book. Mutual Aid, attaches to it this fine comment:

The man of science intended here simply to depict the nature of the Christian style of building; but because he had hit upon the correct, the true content of this style, and because the building of this great period is an epitome and a symbol of its society, he had unintentionally put into words a picture of that society: freedom and union; abundance of supports, which lend assistance to one another.

That is unreservedly right j so right that one can get no clear picture of the building art of the Gothic at all without going deeply into the medieval social structure and apprehending that rich manifoldness which finds faithful expression in Gothic architecture. Like medieval society with its uncounted unions, sworn brotherhoods, guilds, municipalities, federalistic in character and unaware of the principle of centralism, the Gothic

cathederal Is not a centralized structure, but a structure of articulated members, in which every part breathes with its own proper life and is, despite this, organically connected with the whole. Thus, the Gothic building becomes a symbol in stone of an articulated, federated social structure, in which even the smallest part attains effectiveness and contributes to the maintenance of the whole. It could only arise out of a society so rich and of such varied structure, in which every part, consciously or unconsciously, strove toward a common goal. The cathedral was a collective creation in the production of which every section, every member of society, joyously took part. Only through the harmonious cooperation of all the forces in the community, supported by the spirit of solidarity, could the Gothic building arise and become the majestic embodiment of that community which lent it a soul. There was here revealed a spirit which built its own house from within outward, finding it easier to follow its own untamed creative impulse than the laws of esthetics, and which in time created a beauty of its own sort embodying that harmony of every part which best accorded with its innermost essence. Gothic has often been acclaimed as the profoundest revelation of German mood and German nature j in truth it embodies only the mood and the nature of a particular culture period, with roots running back to the tenth century, which from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries spread over all Europe. That epoch, of an inner compactness which still arouses the admiration of the investigator, arose not from the special endeavors of a particular people. It was rather the result of a collective creativeness, the living expression of all the intellectual and social tendencies which then inspired European humanity and stirred it to new creative activity. Unfortunately, this very period is most shamefully misjudged by the majority of those historians who are under the influence of the modern idea of the state. A few historians in every country constitute a glorious exception, and to these we owe it chiefly that an understanding of this much misinterpreted period has been revived, at least for a minority. Among them, Georg Dehio, in his splendidly conceived work on German art, has ably shown that Gothic was not the fruit of a particular people or a special race. He says:

Quite certainly the French were the first to assemble the elements of Gothic construction into a logical system, the first, also, to recognize their value as expression of the Gothic mood, the Gothic world feeling, or whatever else you wish to call it. And by this they are assured of the honor of making a contribution of wide historical application.

It is, however, incorrect to go still further and proclaim this mood, this world feeling, as, in any exclusive sense, a quality of the French mind traceable to hereditary peculiarities. In itself race is a very questionable principle of explanation for phenomena falling within the same time limits. How about

it, if one is dealing with a mixed people? Is it the Gallic or the Latin or the Germanic in the Frenchman that found its expression in Gothic? It is enough just to ask the question in order to realize that the question cannot be asked at aU. Gothic is not to be explained by the tradition of blood; it is the artistic synthesis of the culture that was created and lived out in common by Nordic men in a temporary phase of its development. It was a time-product of world-citizenship at the height of the Middle Ages, which grew out of the idea of the Romanic-Germanic family of peoples—this was the true progenitor of Gothic style.^

It was among the Prankish tribes of the lie de France and in Picardy that the Gothic style first found its fullest expression after it had successfully passed through all the transitional stages. From there, Gothic gradually spread over all Europe and assumed in each region a distinctive form. Often differences made themselves manifest even in the same country, and not seldom in the same town, revealing to us the manifold influences of the time. If the Gothic never attained in Italy to that extreme perfection it reached in many localities in Germany, this is in no way to be traced to the difference of race or nationality. Here the influences of the past played a decisive role, which of necessity operated in Italy quite otherwise than in Germany. In Italy the traditions of the antique had never been completely suppressed j then, too, the bitter opposition of the church to the "pagan tradition" could not be changed in this connection. Echoes of the antique were always noticeable there, and the development of the Gothic style of building could not escape these influences. The same phenomenon can also be observed in many parts of France, where the basic principle of the Romanesque type of building was never quite eliminated from the Gothic structures. In England, again, the principle of vertical construction was carried to the extreme of the perpendicular style which presents a special form of Gothic. Of similar phenomena, which we can perceive in the various phases of development of every great style period, there are a great many.

With the dissolution of medieval society and the ancient city culture Gothic art also sank slowly into its grave. The beginning Renaissance was the initial stroke of a new period in the history of European peoples and necessarily led also to a new style in art. It is a mistake, however, to regard the Renaissance as purely an affair of the arts. Every great transformation of style is the expression of social changes and can be correctly understood only through these. The Renaissance was a cultural event of European importance from the effects of which no people could escape. If one wishes to estimate correctly its influence on the cultural structure of Europe, one must contemplate it as a whole. For what is usually designated as French, Italian or German Renaissance, or appears in the

" Geschichte der deutschen Kunst. Band I, p. 215.

works of the historiographers as Humanism, Reformation or Rationalism, are parts of a single whole which is understandable by us in its entirety only in the light of the inner connections of all of its separate results. Thus regarded, the Renaissance was the beginning of a mighty overturning in all spheres of personal and social life, which led to a reshaping of all the forms of European culture. All earlier norms and concepts had lost their grip, the most firmly held theories and ideas had begun to totter, old and new tumbled together in a crazy chaos, until there were gradually shaped out of it completely new elements of social existence. That such a far-reaching historic occurrence should produce even in the arts a fundamental overturning of all traditional styles, was inevitable and needs no further explanation. In fact, the Renaissance led to a renewal of the ancient concepts of style, a fact which was revealed with especial clarity in architecture. Yet even here one is unable to speak of a sharp break with the past. It is true that the Renaissance was the starting point for a new conception of life and of artistic structure, but its connections with what had been are, despite this, plainly discernible. Here, too, the separate forms penetrate one another, and the new is articulated with the old. Gustav Ebe remarks:

The great epoch of Renaissance art which, arising in Italy, expanded at first over the Western European countries and at last took in the compass of the whole world, is generally conceived as a re-acceptance of the antique-Roman artistic traditions; and this view even goes so far as to assume that the Renaissance, at least in its purest Italian form, drew its whole stylistic apparatus from Roman sources. Meanwhile, independently of the formal stylistic treatment, which expressed itself in a sharp contrast with Gothic, steady advance in the development of spacial types was making itself felt, and it was growing up entirely on the soil of medieval achievements. And in this last mentioned field appears also no sharp break with the next preceding, but a logical further development of the old types, corresponding to the ideas and demands of the time, in a reconstruction which perhaps would not be conceivable without the aid of the antique-sounding terminology.®

The correctness of this observation is obvious. In the artistic treatment of space the architecture of the Renaissance, despite all the stylistic contrasts which separate it from the forms of the Middle Ages, signifies merely a new generation. The external forms change and adapt themselves to the new demands and intellectual currents. The man who turns his ardent gaze from heaven and once more beholds the earth about him clings fast to the earthly. Buildings lose the vertical character which had found its highest perfection in the Gothic and could not be surpassed. In place of the high-uplifted there appeared again the widespread on the

* Architektonischc Raumlehre. Dresden, 1900. Band II, p. i.

earth} the horizontal feature becomes the decisive character of the new building. It no longer grows from within up toward heaven; it is shaped plastically from without, according to definite principles and new artistic assumptions. Proportion becomes once more the measure of everything and assigns to every part its fixed, irrevocable place. The spacial arrangement is clearly thought out and is supported by definite leading principles of organization. The building often terminates in a heavy cornice crown j and the separate stories, too, are sharply marked off from one another by cornices, by which the horizontal character of the whole is still more strongly emphasized. This feature stands out with especial clarity in the palaces of the Italian Renaissance. The column, also, comes again into use, as is shown in an especially charming manner in the courts of the Renaissance buildings in Italy surrounded by loggias and porticos.

In the ecclesiastical buildings the central principle, which had been completely suppressed by the Gothic, became dominant again. For the most part the centralized structure was surmounted by a cupola, which brought out still more forcibly the enclosed character of the structure. Even if the connection with Byzantine and antique prototypes is unmistakable, nevertheless, m.asters like Brunelleschi, Bramante, and especially Michelangelo, were able to bring out entirely new effects of incomparable weight and concentrated strength. It is true that it was necessary to combine the centralized type of building with the oblong in various ways to adapt it to practical demands, but it was just these experiments which, especially in the late Renaissance, gave the impetus for a wealth of the most distinctive style-forms. Michelangelo's design for Saint Peter's in Rome is the most powerful expression of this new style, so to speak, its last word. Bramante, to whom the construction of the cathedral had been intrusted, in his design had surrounded the principal cupola with four small cupolas, each of which was, however, to have its own life and present in itself a finished whole. But Michelangelo, who carried on the work after the death of Bramante, took from the four small cupolas all individuality and subjected them almost violently to the domination of the principal dome. Thus every part was robbed of its independence and incorporated into a central unity which almost crushed the life out of its separate parts. Michelangelo developed this feature to the extreme; but he also opened entirely new outlooks to the art of building and spiritualized it to a degree that makes his creation imperishable.