ROMANESQUE. Meanwhile Europe had enjoyed the architectural revival of the Romanesque period. First Germany and Italy, then France, and finally England and Spain had felt the new artistic currents. There were no national styles, far less was there any unity throughout Europe. Each province had special characteristics. In parts of Italy, such as Tuscany and Rome, the arrangement of the early basilica was preserved almost intact with the added enrich ment of marble and mosaic incrustations and new architectural details. It was the sonic in most of Germany and northern France until the Twelfth Century. Some sections, as Venice and Sicily, were even strongly affected by Byzantine art. But the most fertile novelty of the age was the development of the vault, which found ex pression particularly in central and southern France and northern Italy. The dome (P6ri gord), the tunnel vault (Provence, Burgundy, Spain, etc.), and the groin or cross-vault (Lom hardy) were all successfully used to cover churches of the basilical type. The future of architecture lay in this development. Gradually the ribbed groin-vault gained the supremacy and spmad to Germany, Normandy, and other prov inces of preparing the way for Gothic. The great crypts, the porches, towers, facades of rich and varied types, a decoration of figured and ornamental sculpture, made possible by the use of stone in place of brick, were among the promi nent features. This phase of vaulted Roman esque was rich. heavy, and impressive. It was particularly the style of the monastic orders.
Gornie. Out of it there gradually grew, in the course of the Twelfth Century, in the north of France, the Gothic architecture (q.v. for illustra tion), the perfect embodiment of vaulted construc tive architecture, formed of three main elements: a ribbed groin-vault, receiving all superincumbent weight; piers, receiving their vertical thrust; and flying buttresses, receiving their diagonal thrust. This skeleton, when perfected, freed architecture from the thraldom of heavy walls; hence the development of large window's with their tracery and stained glass, the slender piers, the lofty vaults. The new style was hailed
everywhere and spread from the region of Paris gradually over Europe, being hest understood in Spain and England, less so in Germany, and least of all in Italy. It coincided with the bloom of all the other arts, which remained the handmaids of architecture, contributing to the rich harmony of the style. For the first time since Roman days, a single style prevailed everywhere, break ing through local schools and national peculiar ities. Gothic was essentially of one type and allowed little for individual idiosyncrasies. The typieal cathedrals are those of Paris, Amiens (q.v. for illustration). Rheims, and Strassburg, having great choirs with radiating chapels and aisles, a transept with facades, a nave with two or four aisles, a western facade in three sections with two thinking towers. Single towers •in the centre, as at Ulm; square screen facades, as at Peterborough ; plain square-ending apses, as often in England; all such features are varia tions from the orthodox type. So are the many cases, especially in Italy, when wooden roofs in place of ribbed vaults are used with Gothic forms, but in violation of Gothic principles. The development of Gothic was progressive. The French churches of the Twelfth Century retained many Romanesque forms and heavyproportions as at Sens, Senlis, Noyon, and Laon. Larger win dows and tracery, slender proportions, and height of vaulting came with the Golden Age of the Thirteenth Century, with Notre Dame in Paris, Chartres, Rheims, .Ami•ns, and Saint Dellis. The attenuated geometric style reigned in France in the Fourteenth Century; then the flamboyant until the Sixteenth Century. In England the Early English corresponds to the Thirteenth, the Decorated to the Fourteenth, and the Perpendicu lar to the two succeeding centuries. Other coun tries had corresponding but less clearly marked divisions. The general tendency was increase of decorative richness and variety of form, a loss of scientific as well as artistic values, the invasion of prettiness in place of breadth and strength.