Part 11
In its first appeal to the stranger’s eye there is something unpleasing; a mingling, as it seems to him, of over severity with over minuteness. But let him give it time, as he should to all other consummate art. I remember well how, when a boy, I used to despise that Campanile, and think it meanly smooth and finished. But I have since lived beside it many a day, and looked out upon it from my windows by sunlight and moonlight, and I shall not soon forget how profound and gloomy appeared to me the savageness of the Northern Gothic, when I afterwards stood, for the first time, beneath the front of Salisbury. The contrast is indeed strange, if it could be quickly felt, between the rising of those grey walls out of their quiet swarded space, like dark and barren rocks out of a green lake, with their rude, mouldering, rough-grained shafts, and triple lights, without tracery or other ornament than the martins’ nests in the height of them, and that bright, smooth, sunny surface of glowing jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy traceries, so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes are hardly traced in darkness on the pallor of the Eastern sky, that serene height of mountain alabaster, coloured like a morning cloud, and chased like a sea shell. And if this be, as I believe it, the model and mirror of perfect architecture, is there not something to be learned by looking back to the early life of him who raised it? I said that the Power of human mind had its growth in the Wilderness; much more must the love and the conception of that beauty, whose every line and hue we have seen to be, at the best, a faded image of God’s daily work, and an arrested ray of some star of creation, be given chiefly in the places which He has gladdened by planting there the fir-tree and the pine. Not within the walls of Florence, but among the far away fields of her lilies, was the child trained who was to raise that head-stone of Beauty above the towers of watch and war. Remember all that he became; count the sacred thoughts with which he filled Italy; ask those who followed him what they learned at his feet; and when you have numbered his labours, and received their testimony, if it seem to you that God had verily poured out upon this His servant no common nor restrained portion of His Spirit, and that he was indeed a king among the children of men, remember also that the legend upon his crown was that of David’s:--“I took thee from the sheepcote, and from following the sheep.”
_The Seven Lamps of Architecture_ (London, 1849).
THE HOUSE OF JACQUES CŒUR IN BOURGES.
AD. BERTY.
Certainly Jacques Cœur, that citizen of humble birth, who, by his merit reached the highest dignity of state at an epoch when aristocracy reigned supreme, this man of genius, who, while creating a maritime commerce for France, amassed so great a fortune for himself that he was able to help towards the deliverance of his own country in supporting at his own expense four armies at the same time, was not one of the least important figures of the Fifteenth Century. Posterity has not always been just to this illustrious upstart: he should be ranked immediately after Jeanne d’Arc, for the sword of the Maid of Domrémy would, perhaps, have been powerless to chase the enemy from the soil (which a cowardly king did not think of repulsing), without the wise economy and the generous sacrifices of him, who, at a later period, was abandoned by the king to the rapacity of his courtiers with that same ignoble ingratitude which he had shown to the _sainte libertrice_ of the great nation over which he was so unworthy to rule.
Jacques Cœur was the son of a furrier, or according to some authorities, a goldsmith of Bourges. He was probably following his father’s business when his intelligence and talents brought him into the notice of Charles VII., who had been forced to take refuge in the capital of Berry on account of the English conquests. The king appointed him to the mint, then made him master of this branch of administration, and, finally, _argentier_, a title equivalent to superintendent of finance. Cœur, in his new and brilliant position, did not abandon commerce to which he owed his fortune; his ships continued to furrow the seas, and three hundred clerks aided him in bartering European products for the silks and spices of the East and in realizing a fortune. Always fortunate in his enterprises, ennobled[9] by the king in 1440, and charged by him with many important political missions, he probably did not know how to resist the vertigo which always seizes those of mean origin who attain great eminence. He exhibited an extraordinary luxury, whose splendours humiliated the pride of the noble courtiers, excited their hatred and envy, and contributed to his ruin. With little regard for the great services which he had rendered to the country, such as, for example, the gift of 200,000 crowns in gold at the time of the expedition of Normandy, the nobles only saw in the magnificent _argentier_ an unworthy gambler, who should be deprived of his immense wealth[10] for their profit. For this purpose they organized a cabal. Cœur was charged with a multitude of crimes: he was accused of having poisoned Agnès Sorel, who had made him her testamentary executor, of having altered money, and of various other peculations; he was also reproached for having extorted money for various purposes in the name of the king....
The sentence of Jacques Cœur was not entirely executed; he was not banished, but, on the contrary, was imprisoned in the Convent des Cordeliers de Beaucaire. Aided by one of his clerks, Jean de Village, who had married his niece, he made his escape and went to Rome, where Pope Calixtus III., at that moment preparing an expedition against the Turks, gave him command of a flotilla. Cœur then departed, but, falling ill on the way, he disembarked at Chio, where he died in 1461. His body was buried in the church of the Cordeliers in that island.
Of the different houses which Jacques Cœur possessed, the one considered among the most beautiful in all France, exists almost intact, and is still known under the name of the _Maison de Jacques Cœur_, although it now serves for a hall of justice and mayoralty. This house, or rather this _hôtel_, was built between the years 1443 and 1453, and cost a sum equal to 215,000 francs of our money. For its construction, Cœur, having bought one of the towers of the ramparts of Bourges, commonly called _Tour de la chaussée_, from the fief of this name, built on a level with it another and more beautiful tower, and these two towers served as a beginning for the _manoir_, which was called, in consequence, the _Hôtel de la chaussée_. In building it they used stones taken from the old Roman walls of the town, which were on the site of the new _hôtel_, and which had already been pulled down by virtue of a charter given by Louis VIII. in 1224, by which, permission had been granted for building upon the ramparts and fortifications. At the time of the revision of the law-suit of Jacques Cœur under Louis XI. the _hôtel_ was given back to his heirs, who in 1552 sold it to Claude de l’Aubespine, secretary of state. By a descendant of the latter it was ceded to Colbert in 1679; Colbert sold it again to the town of Bourges on January 30, 1682, for the sum of 33,000 livres. Jacques Cœur’s house was therefore destined to become a _hôtel-de-ville_, and, as we have said, still exists to-day.
[Illustration: HOUSE OF JACQUES CŒUR, BOURGES]
The plan of the building is an irregular pentagon, composed of different bodies of buildings joined without any symmetry, according to the general disposition of almost all mediæval civil and military buildings. The large towers are Jacques Cœur’s original ones. One was entirely reconstructed by him with the exception of the first story, which is of Roman work, as the layers of brick and masonry indicate; the other, on the contrary, received only its crown and a new interior construction, and, like the first, was flanked by a tower destined to serve as a cage for the stairway. The court of honour is vast, and arranged so that it was easy to communicate with the different parts of the _hôtel_.
The façade is composed of a pavilion flanked by two wings. Following an arrangement borrowed from military architecture, two doors were contrived, the little one for the foot-passengers and the large one, which was the door of honour, through which the Cavaliers entered. Both had pointed arches and were ornamented with an archivolt with crockets. One of them still possessed, until about a dozen years ago, its ancient sculptured panels and ornamental iron-work. Above these doors is a large niche with very rich ornamentation, which originally sheltered the equestrian statue of Charles VII. On its right and left is a false window, in which you see the statue of a man-servant in the one and that of a maid-servant in the other, both in the costume of the period. Above this niche the wall is pierced by a large window with four panes, whose tracery reproduces hearts, _armes parlantes_ of the proprietor, and a _fleur-de-lis_, a sign of his recognition by King Charles. A cornice of foliage forms the top of the wall of the pavilion, which is crowned by a very high roof with four sloping and concave sides. Upon the front and back faces of this roof is a large skylight-window and on its lateral faces, a stock of chimneys. On the summit of the roof is an imposing ridge which ends with two long spikes.
The back of the pavilion is exactly like the front, with the exception of a statue of Cœur corresponding to that of the king. To the right of the pavilion there rises an octagonal campanile of great elegance; at its base is a balustrade in whose open-work runs a phylactery, carrying the motto, which is frequently repeated in the building and which characterizes perfectly him who adopted it:
_À vaillans cœurs[11] rien d’impossible._
Notwithstanding the mutilations to which the house of Jacques Cœur has been condemned by its fate, it is certainly one of the most interesting and best preserved of all the civil buildings of the Middle Ages. A vast amount of information regarding the intimate life of the people, which has so great an attraction for the archæologist, is to be found here. If the fact that the study of buildings should be the inseparable companion to that of history was less evident, the house of Jacques Cœur would afford us an opportunity to demonstrate the truth; in reality, when we have studied this building we certainly gain a much clearer idea of the manners of Charles VII.’s reign than could be obtained from a host of lecturers upon history.
Jules Gailhabaud, _Monuments anciens et modernes._ (Paris, 1865).
WAT PHRA KAO.
CARL BOCK.
The first glimpse of Siam which the traveller obtains at Paknam is a fair sample of what is to be seen pretty well throughout the country. As Constantinople is called the City of Mosques, so Bangkok may, with even more reason, be termed the City of Temples. And not in Bangkok only and its immediate neighbourhood, but in the remotest parts of the country, wherever a few people live now, or ever have lived, a Wat with its image, or collection of images, of Buddha, is to be found, surrounded by numberless phrachedees, those curious structures which every devout Buddhist--and all Buddhists are in one sense or another devout--erects at every turn as a means of gaining favour with the deity, or of making atonement for his sins. On the rich plains, in the recesses of the forests, on the tops of high mountains, in all directions, these monuments of universal allegiance to a faith which, more perhaps than any other, claims a devotee in almost every individual inhabitant of the lands over which it has once obtained sway, are to be found. The labour, the time, and the wealth lavished upon these structures are beyond calculation....
The work which, in popular estimation at least, will make his Majesty’s reign most memorable in Siam, is the completion and dedication of the great royal temple, Phra Sri Ratana Satsadaram, or, as it is usually called, Wat Phra Kao. The erection of this magnificent pile of buildings was commenced by Phra Puttha Yot Fa Chulalok, “as a temple for the Emerald Buddha, the palladium of the capital, for the glory of the king, and as an especial work of royal piety.” This temple was inaugurated with a grand religious festival in the year Maseng, 7th of the cycle, 1147 (A. D. 1785), but, having been very hastily got ready for the celebration of the third anniversary of the foundation of the capital, it was incomplete, only the church and library being finished. Various additions were made from time to time, but the Wat remained in an unfinished state until the present king came to the throne. The vow to complete the works was made on Tuesday, the 23rd of December, 1879. The works were commenced during the next month and completed on Monday, the 17th of April, 1882, a period of two years, three months, and twenty days. Thus it was reserved for King Chulalonkorn, at an enormous outlay, entirely defrayed out of his private purse, and by dint of great exertions on the part of those to whom the work was immediately entrusted, to complete this structure, and, on the hundredth anniversary of the capital of Siam, to give the city its crowning glory.
[Illustration: WAT PHRA KAO.]
The work was placed under the direct superintendence of the king’s brothers, each of whom had a particular part of the work allotted to him. One, for instance, relaid the marble pavement, and decorated the Obosot with pictures of the sacred elephant; while a second renewed the stone inscriptions inside the Obosot; a third laid down a brass pavement in the Obosot; a fourth undertook to restore all the inlaid pearl work; another undertook the work of repairing the ceiling, paving, and wall-decoration, and made three stands for the seals of the kingdom; another changed the decayed roof-beams; another covered the great phrachedee with gold tiles--the effect of which in the brilliant sunlight is marvellously beautiful--and repaired and gilded all the small phrachedees; another renewed and repaired and redecorated all the stone ornaments and flower-pots in the temple-grounds, and made the copper-plated and gilt figures of demons, and purchased many marble statues; two princes divided between them the repairs of the cloisters, renewing the roof where required, painting, gilding, paving with stone, and completing the capitals of columns, and so on. Thus, by division of labour, under the stimulus of devotion to the religion of the country, and of brotherly loyalty to the king, the great work was at length completed, after having been exactly one hundred years in course of construction. On the 21st of April, 1882, the ceremony of final dedication was performed, with the greatest pomp, and amid general rejoicings.
Under the name “Wat Phra Kao” are included various buildings covering a large area of ground, which is surrounded by walls decorated with elaborate frescoes. In the centre is a temple, called the Phra Marodop, built in the form of a cross, where on festive occasions the king goes to hear a sermon from the prince-high-priest. The walls of this building are richly decorated with inlaid work, and the ceiling painted with a chaste design in blue and gold. The most striking feature, however, is the beautiful work in the ebony doors, which are elaborately inlaid with mother-of-pearl figures representing Thewedas, bordered by a rich scroll. Behind this chapel-royal is the great phrachedee, called the Sri Ratana Phrachedee, entirely covered with gilt tiles, which are specially made for the purpose in Germany to the order of H. R. H. Krom Mun Aditson Udom Det.
There are several other large buildings in the temple-grounds, but the structure in which the interest of the place centres is the Obosot, which shelters the famous “Emerald Buddha,” a green jade figure of matchless beauty, which was found at Kiang Hai in A. D. 1436, and, after various vicissitudes of fortune, was at last placed in safety in the royal temple at Bangkok. This image is, according to the season of the year, differently attired in gold ornaments and robes. The Emerald Buddha is raised so high up, at the very summit of a high altar, that it is somewhat difficult to see it, especially as light is not over plentiful, the windows being generally kept closely shuttered. For the convenience of visitors, however, the attendants will for a small fee open one or two of the heavy shutters, which are decorated on the outside with gilt figures of Thewedas in contorted attitudes. When at last the sun’s rays are admitted through the “dim religious light,” and the beam of brightness shines on the resplendent figure--enthroned above a gorgeous array of coloured vases, with real flowers and their waxen imitations, of gold, silver, and bronze representations of Buddha, of Bohemian glassware, lamps, and candlesticks, with here and there a flickering taper still burning, and surrounded with a profusion of many-storied umbrellas, emblems of the esteem in which the gem is held--the scene is remarkably beautiful, and well calculated to have a lasting effect on the minds of those who are brought up to see in the calm, solemn, and dignified form of Buddha the representation of all that is good here, and the symbol of all happiness hereafter. The floor of the Obosot is of tessellated brass, and the walls are decorated with the usual perspectiveless frescoes, representing scenes in Siamese or Buddhist history.
It is in this Obosot that the semi-annual ceremony of _Tunam_, or drinking the water of allegiance, takes place, when the subjects of Siam, through their representatives, and the princes and high officers of state, renew or confirm their oath of allegiance. The ceremony consists of drinking water sanctified by the priests, and occurs twice a year--on the third day of the waxing of the Siamese fifth month (i. e., the 1st of April), and on the thirteenth day of the waning of the Siamese tenth month (i. e., the 21st of September).
The foregoing description gives but a faint idea of this sacred and historic edifice, which will henceforth be regarded as a symbol of the rule of the present Siamese dynasty, and the completion of which will mark an epoch in Siamese history.
_Temples and Elephants_ (London, 1884).
THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO.
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.
The exterior of the Cathedral of Toledo is far less ornate than that of the Cathedral of Burgos: it has no efflorescence of ornaments, no arabesques, and no collarette of statues enlivening the porches; it has solid buttresses, bold and sharp angles, a thick facing of stone, a stolid tower, with no delicacies of the Gothic jewel-work, and it is covered entirely with a reddish tint, like that of a piece of toast, or the sunburnt skin of a pilgrim from Palestine; as if to make up the loss, the interior is hollowed and sculptured like a grotto of stalactites.
The door by which we entered is of bronze, and bears the following inscription: _Antonio Zurreno del arte de oro y plata, faciebat esta media puerta._ The first impression is most vivid and imposing; five naves divide the church: the middle one is of an immeasurable height, and the others beside it seem to bow their heads and kneel in token of admiration and respect; eighty-eight pillars, each as large as a tower and each composed of sixteen spindle-shaped columns bound together, sustain the enormous mass of the building; a transept cuts the large nave between the choir and the high altar, and forms the arms of the cross. The architecture of the entire building is homogeneous and perfect, a very rare virtue in Gothic cathedrals, which have generally been built at different periods; the original plan has been adhered to from one end to the other, with the exception of a few arrangements of the chapels, which, however, do not interfere with the harmony of the general effect. The windows, glittering with hues of emerald, sapphire, and ruby set in the ribs of stone, worked like rings, sift in a soft and mysterious light which inspires religious ecstasy; and, when the sun is too strong, blinds of spartium are let down over the windows, and through the building is then diffused that cool half-twilight which makes the churches of Spain so favourable for meditation and prayer.
The high altar, or _retablo_, alone might pass for a church; it is an enormous accumulation of small columns, niches, statues, foliage, and arabesques, of which the most minute description would give but a faint idea; all this sculpture, which extends up to the vaulted roof and all around the sanctuary, is painted and gilded with unimaginable wealth. The warm and tawny tones of the antique gold, illumined by the rays and patches of light interrupted in their passage by the tracery and projections of the ornaments, stand out superbly and produce the most admirable effects of grandeur and richness. The paintings, with their backgrounds of gold which adorn the panels of this altar, equal in richness of colour the most brilliant Venetian canvases; this union of colour with the severe and almost hieratic forms of mediæval art is rarely found; some of these paintings might be taken for Giorgione’s first manner.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO.]
Opposite to the high altar is placed the choir, or _silleria_, according to the Spanish custom; it is composed of three rows of stalls in sculptured wood, hollowed and carved in a marvellous manner with historical, allegorical, and sacred bas-reliefs. Gothic Art, on the borderland of the Renaissance, has never produced anything more pure, more perfect, or better drawn. This work, the details of which are appalling, has been attributed to the patient chisels of Philippe de Bourgogne and Berruguete. The archbishop’s stall, which is higher than the rest, is shaped like a throne and marks the centre of the choir; this prodigious carpentry is crowned by gleaming columns of brown jasper, and on the entablature stand alabaster figures, also by Philippe de Bourgogne and Berruguete, but in a freer and more supple style, elegant and admirable in effect. Enormous bronze reading-desks supporting gigantic missals, large spartium mats, and two colossal organs placed opposite to each other, one to the right and one to the left, complete the decorations....
The Mozarabic Chapel, which is still in existence, is adorned with Gothic frescoes of the highest interest: the subjects are the combats between the Toledans and the Moors; they are in a state of perfect preservation, their colours are as bright as if they had been laid on yesterday, and by means of them an archæologist would gain a vast amount of information regarding arms, costumes, accoutrements, and architecture, for the principal fresco represents a view of old Toledo, which is, doubtless, very accurate. In the lateral frescoes the ships which brought the Arabs to Spain are painted in detail; a seaman might gather much useful information from them regarding the obscure history of the mediæval navy. The arms of Toledo--five stars, _sable_ on a _field_, argent--are repeated in several places in this low-vaulted chapel, which, according to the Spanish fashion, is enclosed by a grille of beautiful workmanship.