College Histories of Art (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ...pyramids of earlier examples. The most remarkable of these spires are those of Freiburg (1300), Strasburg, and Cologne cathedrals, of the church at Esslingen, St. Martin's at Landshut, and the cathedral of Vienna. In these the transition from the simple square tower below to the octagonal belfry and spire is generally managed with skill. In the remarkable tower of the cathedral at Vienna (1433) the transition is too gradual, so that the spire seems to start from the ground and lacks the vigor and accent of a simpler square lower portion. The over-elaborate spire of Strasburg (1429, by Junckher of Cologne; lower parts and facade, 1277-1365, by Erwin von Steinbach and his sons) reaches a height of 468 feet; the spires of Cologne, completed in 1883 from the original fourteenth-century drawings, long lost but recovered by a happy accident, are 500 feet high. The spires of Ratisbon and Ulm cathedrals have also been recently completed in the original style. FIG. 140.--SECTION OF ST. EUZAIIETH, MARBURG. DETAILS. German window tracery was best where it most closely followed French patterns, but it tended always towards the faults of mechanical stiffness and of technical display in over-slenderness of shafts and mullions. The windows, especially in the "hall-churches," were apt to be too narrow for their height. In the fifteenth century ingenuity of geometrical combinations took the place of grace of line, and later the tracery was often tortured into a stone caricature of rustic-work of interlaced and twisted boughs and twigs, represented with all their bark and knots branch-tracery). The execution was far superior to the design. The carving of foliage in capitals, finials, etc., calls for no special mention for its originality or its...