Gothic Architecture and Persian Origins - Kaveh Farrokh

Gothic Architecture and Persian Origins
Author(s): Arthur Upham Pope
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 62, No. 363 (Jun., 1933), pp. 292-294
Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/865561 .
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LETTERS
" GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND PERSIAN
ORIGINS "
SIR,-The thesis that Gothic architecture owes a
good deal to Persian sources is too complex to be
stated or tested by a composition of brief and scattered
quotations from various reports made by
various people even when such a statement is prepared
skilfully, conscientiously, and sympathetically
as by Mr. Briggs in his article on the subject in the
April BURLINGTON. Such preliminary discussions in
advance of a complete and systematic presentation
of the case may help to define the problem, state
the conditions that must govern a decision, and
above all to promote a fair and open-minded hearing
on which Mr. Briggs has so wisely insisted. Without
the latter, preliminary discussions may encour-
age prejudice, fall into sundry errors and retard a
final solution.
As a first requisite to any profitable discussion
of the particular question it is essential to keep in
mind that no adequate presentation of either the
facts or the arguments in support of the thesis has
yet been made. The exhibition of photographs at
the R.I.B.A., for reasons of space as well as cost,
showed scarcely a quarter of the photographs that
have already been made by the writer alone, and
even the total collection of photographs represents
only a portion of the possible material. That seven
monuments, all prior to I150, and not mentioned in
the literature, were discovered in November and
December of last year alone, is evidence that other
monuments of critical importance await discovery.
Only a few of the relevant documents have been
published; in fact the systematic search for them
has hardly begun, while important historical
inscriptions are even now in the course of study and
translation.
It was inevitable, then, that despite all his care
and consideration Mr. Briggs did not wholly escape
some of the difficulties inseparable from such a preliminary
discussion.
First as to the origin of the pointed arch. By
some inadvertence Mr. Briggs ascribed to me the
statement that its first apearance is to be found
in the Tari(kh) Khaneh of Damghan, a statement
that I have never made inasmuch as I am quite
familiar with the discussion about the pointed arches
at Qasr Ibn-Wardan (561-4), and have been careful
not to call the Damghan arches true pointed
arches. On the other hand, the date I proposed
for Tari(kh) Khaneh (circa 700) cannot be challenged
by quoting from Creswell to the effect that the
mosque of Nayin is the oldest standing Islamic
monument. What Creswell of necessity meant was
that Nayin was the oldest so far published at the time
of writing (I930). Godard and Creswell for that
matter both date Tari(kh) Khaneh as contemporary
with the palace and mosque of Ukhaidir 1 (circa 850)
because of the identity in the curvature of the
arches. Dr. Reuther of Dresden, however (and
there can be few better judges), thinks that a much
earlier date could be defended, and it is worth notinz
that the dimensions and the lay of the bricks
1 Cf. Gertrude L. Bell: " Ukhaidir."
are identical with those in the third-century 2
Sananian palace unearthed by Dr. Schmidt at
Damghan.
Although as a form and a symbol the pointed arch
came from India originally, there are good reasons
to think that it was first translated into an effective
structural form in Persia, despite the emphatic statement
to the contrary which Mr. Briggs quotes from
Creswell. The case cannot be easily proved one
way or the other since no standing monuments built
between the fourth and the eighth century have yet
been found in Persia. None the less we are not
without evidence of the early adoption of the pointed
arch in Persia. The bronze Sasanian salver in the
Kaiser Friedrich Museum contains an accurately
engraved elevation of a Sasanian garden palace,
the portal of which shows a sharply pointed arch.3
There is even better reason for thinking that the
pointed vault was first fully developed in Persia.
The earliest examples are not those of the Masjid-i
Jami in Isfahan, which belongs to the end of the
eleventh century, as Mr. Briggs apparently thinks,
but there are some others there for which a ninth
century dating can be argued. However, the
vaults of Nayin are certainly not later than the.
tenth century, and a local tradition which was based
on a now destroyed inscription insists that the
building was finished in the latter part of the ninth
century. Moreover, the pointed vaults adjoining
the Mihrab in the Masjid-i Jumeh of Shiraz are certainly
of the end of the ninth century, as are the very
similar Persian-built pointed vaults of the mosque
of Kilwa-Kisawami, off Zanzibar. These vaults, and
others which could be cited, antedate by far the
European examples which Mr. Briggs cites, if not
those cited by Rivoira. But in such matters
Rivoira is a weak reed. He wrote as an overheated
propagandist. Creswell has justly protested against
his intolerant, arrogant and provocative manner
and, what is more, has devastated some of his most
confident assertions of matter of fact by showing
that they were not facts at all.
The question of buttresses is more obscure and
is largely a matter of definition. Are the internal
buttresses of Sarvistan true buttresses and do they
contain the flying buttress in embryo ? Opinions
differ. A citation of the fully-developed buttresses
in the Masjid-i Jami in Isfahan, which lack but
little of the true flying buttress, would not prove anything
since, although a case can be made out for
dating them in the end of the eleventh century, a
fourteenth-century date is conceivable and has not
yet been definitely excluded.
Most important of all are the ribbed vaults.
While most of those in Isfahan belong to the decade
Io80-9o, those a Niyin and Shiraz are much earlier;
while in some the ribs are primarily decorative, in
others (Cf. Plate A) they are structural. Some are
all but identical with certain Lombard vaults, and
2 This is the dating given by Dr. Schmidt and Prof. Herzfeld
based upon some Parthian coins that were found on the site.
3 This drawing and its implications are being discussed in
some detail in a forthcoming article by the writer in the Art
Bulletin.
293

A-The Masjid i-Jum'a (or " Friday Mosque ") at Isfahan. Ribbed vault.
Circa Io80-90, possibly earlier.
B-The Masjid i-Jum'a (or " Friday Mosque ") at Isfahan. Ribbed vault,
south side. Circa Io80, possibly earlier.
Letter: " Gothic Architecture and Persian Origins "

Letters
others (PLATE B) are very close to some of the
ribbed vaults in Cordova and Toledo which have
been published by Professor Lambert of Caen.
Others have almost identical counterparts in Scandinavia,
such as in the church of St. Nicolai in
Visby 4 while still others of the Isfahan vaults are
closely paralleled by a vault in the Eglise at Sarlat
in the Dordogne. Examples could be multiplied.
As for dome construction, I think that Mr. Briggs
has accepted too readily the universal theory of the
essential difference between Persian and Byzantine
dome construction. Although
not so critical for its
bearings on Gothic, it is a matter of great intrinsic
interest. Byzantium employed the pendentive
perhaps exclusively, having received it from Syria,
which is generally credited with its discovery, since
the earliest examples are found there, while Persia,
on the contrary, is thought to have confined itself
strictly to the use of the squinch. But, as a matter
of fact, Persia has employed the pendentive from
the earliest Islamic times at least. They are to be
found in the little domes of Tari(kh)
Khaneh and
in all the huge seventeenth-century domes of
Isfahan. The fact that only a very few examples
can be cited for Syria show that it was never
thoroughly accepted there and may even be held to
indicate that it was an imported form. The fact that
4 Cf. J. Roosval: " Westfilisch-gotliindische Beziehungen
in der Architecture des 13. Jahrhunderts," 1928.
THE LITERATURE OF ART
THE MONUMENTS OF BASEL. BY CAMPBELL
DODGSON.
Die Kunstdenkmiiler des Kantons Basel-Stadt. By C. H. Baer
and others. Vol. I. 709 pp. fully illustrated. Basel.
(E. Birkhdiuser and Cie). Sub.; Price Frs. 66.
As part of the series " Die Kunstdenkmailer der
Schweiz," the first of two volumes devoted to the
monuments and works of art of the town of Basel,
itself a canton, has recently appeared. A substantial
volume, profusely illustrated (40 plates, 478
text illustrations), it is the work of numerous
authors under the general editorship of C. H. Baer.
Well planned, detailed, exact and concise, but with
the main sections, between the documents, readable
and expressed in good literary form, it is a model
of what such an archaeological and topographical
record should be.
A geographical and statistical account of Basel
leads to a statement of the traces left by prehistoric,
Roman and Frankish times, followed by the history
of Basel under the bishops, and since its union with
the Swiss Confederation, and an account of its coinage
and of its topography, with full details of such
early views as are extant. Then the surviving monu-
ments of architectural and historical interest are
accurately described: the city walls, the gates, the
Rhine bridge, and the works of sculpture attached
to them. The largest section in the book (pp. 337-
646) is devoted to the Rathaus. The history of its
architecture is contributed by C. H. Baer, and a full
account of the two series of glass paintings (in large
part still extant) which adorned the " Stube des
kleinen Rats " and the " Vordere Ratstube " respectively
is given by Fritz Gysin, The twelve arms of
294
it has been continuously employed for more than a
thousand years in Persia, in buildings large and
small, and in every part of the country, creates some-
thing of a presumption that it might have originated
there.
As a matter of detail, it ought perhaps to be noted
that the Masjid-i Jami in Ardistan is dated Ir33-4
and that the date of the Masjid-i Jume)h of Gulpaigan,
obviously a Seljuk monument, is not yet deciphered.
The attribution to the " end of the tenth century "
was based upon an erroneous reading of the name of
the builder.
Yours faithfully,
ARTHUR UPHAM POPE
THOMAS HEAPHY
SIR,-The Royal Society of British Artists' Art
Club is preparing to publish a monograph by Mr.
William T. Whitley on " Thomas Heaphy; First
President of the Society of British Artists."
May I crave the hospitality of your columns to
invite the curators of galleries and private collectors
to let me have particulars of any works by this artist
they may have in their possession, or of the whereabouts
of which they know, with a view to making
the monograph as complete as possible?
Yours faithfully,
HESKETH HUBBARD
President
the Cantons still preserved, the work of Anthoni
Glaser, dating from about 1520, are reproduced and
exactly described, with mention of every restoration
and of all the documents relating to their history.
This chapter is a model of exactitude and clear
presentation.
But probably most readers of this magazine would
find the next chapter, by Rudolf Riggenbach, on the
wall-paintings of the Rathaus, more interesting than
any other portion of the book. The remains and
history of the pre-Holbein wall-paintings, by Hans
Dyg (repeatedly repainted) and others are first disposed
of. Then we read everything that is known
of Holbein's paintings in the hall of the Great
Council, carried out chiefly in 1521-22, while the
last wall was left till 1530, when it was painted from
two designs, one of which (The Wrath of Rehoboam)
is believed to date from about 1523-24, the other
(Samuel meeting Saul) being newly drawn in the
year I530. The three extant original drawings
(these two and the early Valerian and Sapor), the
numerous copies of lost drawings, the few surviving
fragments of the paintings themselves, and the
copies, by Hess and others, are so, presented, with
all the documents and early comments, including
one attributed to Holbein himself, on the works when
executed, as to give in combination what appears to
be a complete and faultless record (save for a few
trifling misprints) of this important, but almost
perished work by Holbein. The reconstruction of
the original appearance of the much-altered room,
a matter of considerable difficulty, has been effected,
after much preliminary work by Professor H. A.