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Its towers are solid masses of heavy stone; instead of spires, there are crenellations; instead of graceful flying-buttresses at the sides, there are solid, upright supports on the firm, plain side-walls. This is the true old Romanesque. A few steps further, and the apse appears, as great a contrast to the body of the church as a bit of Mechlin lace to a coat-of-mail.
In the aisle walls are two pierced circular windows, Romanesque in design. In one, two dragons are represented devouring a man; in the other are two lions rearing against a twisted pillar on which is a cup. The bodies are broken, and the tails, which remain, encroach upon the wall surface.
No one can say of the modern English girl that she is tender, loving, retiring, or domestic. The old fault so often found by keen-sighted Frenchwomen, that, she was so fatally romanesque, so prone to sacrifice appearances and social advantages for love, will never be set down to the girl of the period. Love, indeed, is the last thing she thinks of, and the least of the dangers besetting her.
There are in Blackstone Hall in the Chicago Art Institute several great Romanesque and Gothic portals, pillars, and statues that might tell directly upon certain settings of our Jeanne d'Arc pageant. They are from Notre Dame du Port at Clermont-Ferrand, the Abbey church of St.
Within those huge thick walls, whose windows, sunk deep into their solid mass, only let in threads of jewelled light, under their solemn circular richly carved brows, between those marble pillars; the elder ones, round and solid, with Romanesque mighty strength; the new graceful clusters of shining blood-red marble shafts, surrounding a slender white one, all banded together with gold, under the vaults of the stone roof, upon the mosaic floor there was always a still refreshing coolness, like the "shadow of a great rock in a weary land."
Bowed shoulders are straightened, downcast eyes are raised, sepulchral voices become seraphic. It is, in fact, the expansion of the spirit, while the Romanesque symbolizes its repression. At least, to me, that is the interpretation of these styles," Durtal repeated to himself. "Nor is that all," he went on. "Yet another distinction may be deduced from these observations.
Gally Knight easily saw that there was nothing in the church which could be of Count Robert's time except the fine Romanesque doorway on the south side. And even that we should now call too advanced for Count Robert's own work; we should set it down for the last finish of a building which doubtless took some time to make complete in all its parts.
These chapels are built in all possible styles and in all degrees of splendour and magnificence, according to the generosity of the donor. Here they bulge out, deforming the regular plan of the church, or else they take up an important part of the interior of the building. There they are Renaissance jewels in a Gothic temple, or else ogival marvels in a Romanesque building.
Finally, there is a central tower which is neither Gothic nor Romanesque but pure Italian, a loggia, with splendid round airy windows taking up all its walls, and with a flat roof and eaves. This some one straight from the south must have put on as a memory of his wanderings.
The principal of the early mediæval art developments was the Byzantine. It flourished principally in the eastern part of Europe. In the west it was known, with a few variations, as the Lombard and the Norman. All three are often included under the term Romanesque. Byzantine art was essentially Christian in its spirit and motives.
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