ARCHITECTURE - Karatunov.net

CH. xxix] BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE 259In Aquitaine, on the line of trade with the Levant,we find the construction influenced by the Byzantineschool, which inspired the domed churches of P^rigueux,Angouleme, Solignac, and the rest of that group, andreached Le Puy in the Auvergne.Burgundy was the seat of monasticism, and from thecloistered workshops of Cluny and the Cluniac monasteriesnot only in France but beyondits borders arose a schoolof architecture which affected the art far and wide.BurgundyIt was from Burgundy that architecture was carried Normandyinto Normandy, where a school arose owing less than anyother to Roman example, following a line of its own,robust and virile, deficient in sculpture for want of ancientexample, and dependent on simple constructional formsand mass for effect.From Normandy this art passed with the conquest Englishinto England, where it speedily suppressedand almostwiped out the Saxon architecture of the conquered race,which thoughit had a certain national character possessedlittle vitality and showed little promise of further progress*The history of Romanesque fluenced by two opposite principles on the one hand;architecture was in- TWOancient Roman example held the artists fast-bound, as esquefar as it could, to precedent;on the other the necessitiesand possibilities of the time drove them intonovel experiments, and made an ever widening breachbetween their work and their models. In Italy, as was Roman artnatural, Roman tradition was strongest. It was Roman On5manartwhich Charlemagne's renaissance attemptedto reviveesquein Gaul and Austrasia, To build in the manner of theRomans was the ambition of our Saxon forefathers.The Roman round arch gave way to the pointed only172