The cathedral builders in England . living the original painting of our cathedrals has perished from theirwalls or is left to us as the merest patches, and faded into dinginess—yet, wherever we find a piece that is real, what a life of colour doesit give ! It is this realization of colour by the mediaeval workmanwhich, in the eye of the artist, raises him on a plane to which no modernarchitect reaches. Not only had the building the modelling of thesculptor, the feeling of shade and gradation, which gives the effectof life: it had, too, the painters glory, the composition of a glowi
The cathedral builders in England . living the original painting of our cathedrals has perished from theirwalls or is left to us as the merest patches, and faded into dinginess—yet, wherever we find a piece that is real, what a life of colour doesit give ! It is this realization of colour by the mediaeval workmanwhich, in the eye of the artist, raises him on a plane to which no modernarchitect reaches. Not only had the building the modelling of thesculptor, the feeling of shade and gradation, which gives the effectof life: it had, too, the painters glory, the composition of a glowingbrightness. One sees how our arts have lost the sense of treating architecture asa colour-picture : but the shadowy cathedral, and often some sadneglected old church, comparatively untouched by vulgar substitutionsseems aglow with it. Sometimes, indeed, the old painted glass remainsas a sample of the brilliance, and we may catch in the hollow of a mould-ing or the recess of a roof-timber the suggestion of what an art of colour. INTRODUCTION 19 meant. Here and there by chance preservation a chapel or a tombgives us the ancient treatment, but usually there are now only the crudegroiindmg paints, which were brought into harmony by glazings anddiapers. They are these partial preservations which have deceivedus, and indeed modern decorators, under the theory of revival, haveseized on such under-tints and sought to restore the ancient paintingof buildings by their use. But the crude and unpleasant aspects ofthis revival-painting were not those of the original effect. Likeother restorations the efforts in this direction miss the beauty theymimic. We can readily be assured that nothing of crudity found placein the colour schemes of the middle ages—for have we not their illu-minated manuscripts in evidence ? For its pure and delicate harmony,a page of a thirteenth or fourteenth century manuscript may competewith the works of the greatest masters of colour that the world has known,
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpubli, booksubjectarchitects
