ARCHITECTURE - Karatunov.net

CH. xxiv] FRANCE NORMANDY 149art, but they infused into it their national genius, positive,Normanconquestsigrand, a trine -nsavageibuti ineverthelessrfreeiand unfettered1 ." The nth century was the period of theutmost expansion of the Norman race.They had plantedthemselves firmly in the conquered province of France ;they had made themselves masters of Sicily and Apulia,and shaken the throne of the Eastern Empire ; and inthe latter part of the century they conquered England,and became a great European power. Their peculiarstyle of architecture which they afterwards brought withthem to England, where it almost wiped out all traces ofthe older Saxon work, is a fittingmonument of theirgreatnessand activity.Byzantine architecture had not made any impressionT- i XT Romanon the northern provinces of r ranee, and the Norman remainsstyle was based originally on Gallo-Roman examples.Provincial Roman work declined in quality as it recededPoverty offarther and farther from the Capital, and the buildingswhich the Normans had to guide them were no doubtvery inferior to those of Provence. In particular thesculpture would have been coarse and inartistic, andthere would have been but little of it. The figuresand ornaments found in the Roman baths at Bath areprobably favourable specimens of what art could do inthe northern provinces of the later empire. There was CharacterA. . of, .,Normantherefore nothing to inspire the northern architect to ornamentrival the portals of Aries or S, Gilles, and figure sculptureis either wholly absent from Norman work, or if presentbarbarous. In decorative carving also the same sterilityshows itself. There are no foliaged capitals like thoseof S. Trophime, or Avallon, but in the earlier Normanwork only plain cushion capitals,made by squaring and1V.-le-Duc, vol. i. 138.