Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres . s down to the entrance, because —as is said — pilgrims came in such swarms that they were obliged tosleep in the church, and the nave had to be sluiced with water to cleanit. The true height of Chartres, at the croisee of nave and transept,is as near as possible one hundred and twenty feet ( metres). The measured height is the least interest of a church. The archi-tects business is to make a small building look large, and his failuresare in large buildings which he makes to look small. One chief beautyof the Gothic is to exaggerate height, and one of its m
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres . s down to the entrance, because —as is said — pilgrims came in such swarms that they were obliged tosleep in the church, and the nave had to be sluiced with water to cleanit. The true height of Chartres, at the croisee of nave and transept,is as near as possible one hundred and twenty feet ( metres). The measured height is the least interest of a church. The archi-tects business is to make a small building look large, and his failuresare in large buildings which he makes to look small. One chief beautyof the Gothic is to exaggerate height, and one of its most curious quali-ties is its success in imposing an illusion of size. Without leaving theheart of Paris any one can study this illusion in the two great churchesof Notre Dame and Saint-Sulpice; for Saint-Sulpice is as lofty asNotre Dame in vaulting, and larger in its other dimensions, besidesbeing, in its style, a fine building; yet its Roman arches show,as ifthey were of the eleventh century, why the long, clean, unbroken,. CHARTRES: THE NAVE THE KEW YORK ASTOU, LKNOX ANDTlUlEN ^ll•^•I>•Tll»^S ROSES AND APSES in refined lines of the Gothic, curving to points, and leading the eye witha sort of compulsion to the culminating point above, should have madean architectural triumph that carried all Europe off its feet with de-light. The world had seen nothing to approach it except, perhaps, inthe dome of Sancta Sophia in Constantinople; and the discovery cameat a moment when Europe was making its most united and desperatestruggle to attain the kingdom of Heaven. According to Viollet-le-Duc, Chartres was the final triumph of theexperiment on a very great scale, for Chartres has never been alteredand never needed to be strengthened. The flying buttresses of Chartresanswered their purpose, and if it were not a matter of pure constructionit would be worth while to read what Viollet-le-Duc says about them(article, Arcs-boutants). The vaulting above is heavy, about fif-teen
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectmiddleages, bookyear1
