Chapter X: Appendix (2)

There are also throughout the nave of the cathedral a number of very curious seats; they vary a good deal in detail, but their outline is similar, and their effect rather striking; I confess, however, that I was sorry to see examples of fixed seats of such a date in a cathedral church. In the nave there are some pendents for candles; one an angel holding a light, and strongly reminding one of those beautiful angels with candles above the stalls in the choir of S. Laurence at Nuremberg; and the other, a much more elaborate composition, and coloured richly in gold, red, and blue; it has two sitting figures of Bishops under canopies, and bears three very large candles. One of the great treasures of this church is the magnificent brass to Bishop Johann von Mull, and Bishop Burchard von Serken, who deceased in 1350 and 1317. I was unable to make so careful a rubbing of this magnificent brass as I could have wished, but I have done enough to show how grand it is, and how very similar in its details to the famous Flemish brasses which remain at Lynn, S. Albans, North Mymms, Wensley, and Newark. Like two of these, of which we fortunately possess rubbings, it is remarkable for being one great engraved plate, and not, as was the English custom, a plate cut out to the shape of the figure, and then inserted in an incised slab; and compared with the S. Albans brass, which hangs by its side, it will be seen that the detail is so exactly similar, that there can scarcely be a shadow of a doubt that they were both engraved by the same man. It is perhaps altogether the finest of the whole, and if so, perhaps the finest brass in Europe. It is appreciated by the sacristan, who demands a fee for lifting up a cover which he keeps on it, and whose temper was of so difficult a kind that I almost despaired being allowed to rub it. However, by persevering, I at last succeeded.

Lastly, there is in a chapel on the north side of the nave a most magnificent triptych by Memling, almost unequalled by any work of his I have ever seen. It has double shutters; on the outer, figures of SS. Blaise, Giles, John, and Jerome, and inside are painted the Crucifixion, and a number of subjects from the Passion of our Lord, all worked together into one grand picture in a manner favourite with painters of Memling’s time, and not to be contemned because no longer the custom of our artists, inasmuch as Memling, Van Eyck, Giotto, and their contemporaries all did it, and what they did we may well believe not to have been done without good reason. The expression of all the faces is most careful, and the skill with which portraits are preserved throughout all the subjects, as e.g. of S. Peter, of Judas, and of our Lord, is very marvellous. They were obviously painted from actual faces, and not imagined. The colour of the whole is generally very rich and deep, the drawing very vigorous, and the whole forms one of the most magnificent specimens it is possible to imagine of the early German school.

I have forgotten to say that the font in the cathedral is of metal. It is a bowl arcaded and supported on four figures of angels; but it is not very good in its character; perhaps we might think much of it here, but in northern Germany, where I had just been seeing the wonderful fonts at Münster, Brunswick, and above all at Hildesheim, the metal fonts at Lübeck struck me as looking very poor.

I happened to come in for the end of a week-day sermon here, and was rather amused, after it was finished, to find the _Prediger_ descending from the pulpit, and directing his steps towards me, whilst the people went on singing: however, he turned into a great sort of glazed pew in the choir-aisle, and there, having shut himself in, he enthroned himself in a comfortable chair, waited for about ten minutes until the sound of singing and music had died away, and then stole back and out of the church at the west. It is curious, in northern Germany, to observe how entirely, in public ministrations, the Lutheran ministers seem to consider preaching their only work; going in after the preparatory hymn is sung, and going away as soon as their sermon is finished, without regard to the hymn which always winds up their functions. In Lübeck there was a curious madness about preaching: every morning, between eight and nine, there seemed to be sermons going on; and as the congregations are infinitesimal, they do all they can to keep a stray listener, when they can have him within their walls, by locking the doors. Happily, I escaped, by judicious management, the sad fate of listening to a sermon from any of these divines in black cloaks and immense white frills, who look like so many repetitions of their great prototype, Luther.

And now I must leave the cathedral, and getting over the difficulties of the horrible pavement which distinguishes this end of the city as well as may be, take you to the Marien-Kirche; the church which, in one’s first view of Lübeck, one naturally takes for the cathedral, from its central position and general grandeur. The whole church is built of red brick, though unfortunately, internally, it has been daubed all over with a succession of coats of whitewash. I was able to measure the ground-plan, which may be taken as a type of the ground-plan most in favour in Lübeck, and indeed generally in this part of Germany. All the columns, arches, groining-ribs, and even the window tracery, are built of moulded bricks; and, as will be seen from the detail, the piers and arches are particularly well moulded and good. Not so the window tracery, which is very plain, and like all brick window tracery, most unsatisfactory, consisting as it does of three arched heads within the window arch, without cusping or ornament of any kind to relieve its baldness. The transepts hardly show on the ground-plan, and externally they are finished with two gables instead of one, and are so insignificant, consequently, as hardly to deserve notice. Between the buttresses all round is a row of chapels, their external walls being flush with the face of the buttresses. Among other good features in this church are the Lady-chapel to the east of the main apse, and the late turret over the intersection of nave and choir; and lastly, the two grand steeples at the west end. This kind of steeple was not an invention peculiar to Lübeck, but is a kind of which one finds many examples throughout northern Germany. The earliest with which I am acquainted are at Soest and Paderborn cathedrals, both of them very fine, and much earlier in date than the Lübeck examples; and these clearly have some affinity to the Lombard churches on the Rhine, save that the continual repetition of stage above stage, exactly alike, is a feature of their own, and one which the builders of the great brick steeples in the fourteenth century always had before them. Certainly, the two western steeples of the Marien-Kirche are very noble, and make one admire immensely this kind of spire, which, as you will see, rises from the angles of the tower and the points of the gables, which are so great a feature as a finish to each face of the tower. These great gables are generally filled in with tracery, without much regard to uniformity or symmetry, but sometimes, as in the noble steeple of S. John, Lüneburg, most effective: the spires in this case, and indeed almost always, are of timber covered with copper.

It will be seen from the plan that the dimensions of this church are very grand. The length is 280 English feet; height to vault, 108 ft.; height of aisles, 59 ft.; the spires, 344 ft.

The church was founded circa A.D. 1276, the north-west tower in 1304, and the south-west in 1310; and the whole may, I think, from its mouldings, etc., be taken as an example of Lübeck middle-pointed.

In the interior arrangement there is no very distinct triforium, though the clerestory windows have their inside arches lengthened down to a string-course above the main arcade, and in the choir there is a pierced parapet above this string.

The east window of the main apse, and the east windows of the eastern chapel, are filled with exceedingly brilliant stained glass, said to be the work of an Italian; it was brought in 1818 from the Burg-Kloster church, which was destroyed at that time, and which, judging from what still remains, and from the relics of its art treasures, preserved here and elsewhere, must have been one of the most interesting churches in the city. The three windows contain the legend of S. Jerome, the legend of the finding of the Cross, and the legend of S. Peter. They are said to have been done by the son of Dominic Livi, of Ghambasso, near Florence, who, after he had learnt his art and long practised it in Lübeck, went back in 1436 to Florence, where he executed the celebrated windows in the Duomo. I have never seen these Florentine windows, but, judging from my knowledge of the very mediocre character of Italian glass generally, I should say that there could be no improbability on the face of a story which would account for really beautiful glass being done at Florence. Certainly, this Lübeck glass is very good and brilliant, and valuable, as being, with a little still preserved in one of the windows of the Katerinen-Kirche, the only old glass preserved in any of the churches in Lübeck.

The nave of S. Mary is pewed throughout, and encumbered at the west end with a prodigious organ; but the choir is fairly perfect. It is screened in on all sides; to the west by means of a rood-screen, similar in plan to that at the cathedral, but of earlier date, and at the sides with screens mainly composed of brass. These screens are very common in all the churches here, but these are the best I have seen: they are very late in date, not at all satisfactory in their design, and in all cases the cornices and the lower part of the screens are of oak, the brass-work being confined to the uprights and the tracery, if tracery it can be called.

In the choir there is a magnificent metal _Sakraments-Haus_, very elaborate, and full of most delicate work; it has been shamefully damaged, but enough remains to make one class it with the best of these often beautiful pieces of church furniture. About twenty feet in height, it stands on lions’ backs, and finishes at the top with the Crucifixion.

One of the relics still preserved in this church is a Dance of Death, in a series of twenty-five paintings round the walls of a chapel which forms part of the north transept; it is a very complete painting, and its date, which is said to be A.D. 1463, makes it one of the earliest paintings of this very curious subject. Mr. Douce, in his treatise on the Dance of Death, mentions older examples at Minden, in the churchyard of the Innocents at Paris, in the cloister of the S. Chapelle at Dijon, and that at Basle, which is the most famous of all. Most, if not all of these, are, however, now destroyed, and the interest of this painting becomes therefore the greater. It is certainly very valuable; if for no other reason, for the variety of costume, of every rank and order of men, which it contains, beginning with the pope, the emperor, empress, cardinal, king, bishop, duke, abbat, and so on to the young woman and the little child.

Besides these paintings are two by Overbeck: one in the Lady-chapel, finished in 1824, of our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem, is certainly very beautiful, in its calm simplicity and purity of colour, reminding one much of Raffaelle’s early style, or of some work of that great Christian artist, Perugino; and therefore most grateful to me, and far more pleasing than the other, which is a Pietà, painted in 1847, and in a thoroughly different and much more naturalistic style. In the first painting the Lübeck people recognise and point out, with no little pride, Overbeck’s father, mother, and sisters, all of them--as also the great artist himself--natives of Lübeck, and perhaps fairly enough introduced in this his offering to his native town. A lion of the Marien-Kirche is the clock--one of those clumsy pieces of ingenuity which so often annoy one on the Continent. There is also a metal font, said to have been made in 1337 by one Hans Apengeter; but like that at the cathedral, not very satisfactory.

After these two great churches, certainly by far the most interesting church is that of the Minorite convent, S. Katharine, which is in many ways so remarkable, as to leave perhaps a stronger impression on one’s mind than anything else in the city. It is a desecrated church, but desecrated happily in a quiet way; unused, and not much cared for, but as yet not destroyed, and serving now only as a kind of museum of old church furniture, great store of which, from the Burg-Kloster church and elsewhere, is accumulated in its choir.

The date of the foundation of this church is given on an inscription near the door as A.D. 1335, and its founder Bishop Henry Bockholt; but an old chronicler, Reimar Cock, says that the guardian of the church, Brother Emeke, pulled down the church in 1351, and rebuilt it in three years more beautifully than before, with the alms which, during the time of the plague, were given to the monks.

I have drawn out the plan of this church, and, with the help of my sketches, this may, I trust, explain its extraordinary arrangement. This consists in the elevation of the choir, with a kind of crypt below it, above the floor of the rest of the church; the floor of the crypt being level with that of the nave, and divided into three widths with slender shafts, the whole groined, and when seen from the nave, presenting certainly one of the most striking and curious interiors I have ever met with. The west end of the under church opens to the nave with three arches, looking just like the ordinary arrangement of rood-screens in Lübeck; and this is just what it is: the whole choir is simply a prolongation eastwards of the rood-loft, and at the west end there is a raised screen surmounting the three arches, out of which rises a most magnificent and perfect rood, with SS. Mary and John on either side. The entire absence of seats in the nave, the great height of the church, the darkness of the long vista of arch and column under the choir, and the magnificence of the rood, make this interior one of the most satisfactory and least altered things I know; and if its arrangement is not absolutely unique, it is certainly not far from being so. In England I know nothing at all like it, unless such an example as the little church at Compton, near Guildford, be taken, in which there are indeed some points of similarity--the low sanctuary, with its groined roof, and the chapel above opening to the church, and fenced in with its low Romanesque screen-work; all this, though on a far smaller scale, certainly tallies curiously with this Minorite church at Lübeck.[77]

An iron grill shuts off the chapels at the east end of the under church, and in the centre of these is a fine brass, of which I obtained a rubbing. It is to a member of the Lüneburg family, and contains the figure of the burgomaster John Lüneburg, who died in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The inscriptions are curious, the name, etc., all in Latin, ending with “Bidde God vor em”; and another ending “Orate: ah werlt du hest mi bedragen!” It will be seen from the drawing of the interior that the whole detail is of a very severe kind,--all brick, and alas! all whitewashed. The access to the choir is by a staircase in the south aisle, which did not appear to me to be old. There is a space of some ten or twelve feet between the west side of the rood-loft and the choir-stalls, which are returned; and into this space the staircase leads. The stalls are old, and very good; and the whole pavement of the upper choir is of tiles, of a peculiar and interesting kind, if only for its novelty. The only pattern tiles are in the borders, the remainder are green, black, red, and light red, made in various shapes, and very good in their effect. One of the chapels in the Marien-Kirche is similarly paved, but not on so grand a scale, or with so many patterns. The only pavements at all approaching to the same kind which at the present moment I can call to mind, are that which has been so strangely--as it were providentially--preserved in the footpace on which once stood the high altar at Fountains Abbey, perfect and untouched, where all else is ruin and desolation;--and in those most lovely marble pavements in S. Anastasia, at Verona. Some of the arrangements of the patterns approach very near to these, but how much more beautiful the marble of Verona is than the tiles of Lübeck one can hardly say.

And with this ends all that one knows as positively belonging to S. Katharine; for in this unused choir is now a store of triptychs of that kind which, after some acquaintance with German churches, one learns to tire of, covered with carving, quaint, and richly coloured, or painted in Scripture story or strange legend, well enough in their proper place, and giving once doubtless great dignity to the altars they adorned, but here--collected and set out for view as a gallery of paintings--if not worthless, at best very unsatisfactory. But besides all these triptychs, there is a large aumbrye, with its old iron gates and locks still perfect, in which is a large collection of portions of monstrances, chalices, crosses, and the like: many of them very beautiful, but all damaged and in fragments. Among other things I saw a curious leather bag for carrying books, with an ingenious pocket for money contrived in its folds and very securely fastened.

But what is most rare and curious is a collection of ancient linen altar-cloths, which I had great trouble in getting a sight of, and which I could not draw, as the curator of the museum insisted on showing them himself, and when I wished to draw them, told me that he had already himself drawn them: this, as may be imagined, was a very poor source of comfort to me.

There was a corporal about 2 feet square, and fringed; along the edge of which was worked an arcade with figures of saints, the dresses stitched in a regular pattern all over, and the folds left plain: the date of this was about A.D. 1280. There was another embroidered corporal which I managed to get a drawing of: this was 2 feet square, with a large cross in the centre and four smaller crosses in the corners; the whole worked in a cross-stitch with blue and red on the white linen. Date, I think, about 1450.

Then there were two linen cloths for the altar: one, 14 ft. long by 3 ft. 10 in. wide, with a great number of figures of prophets surrounded with branching foliage; from the character of the figures, I date this at about A.D. 1400. All the outlines of the figures, leaves, etc. were marked with coloured ink borders on the linen before the work was done: the hair and points of the dresses here and there were marked with bright colour, but generally the work was all in white thread,--the stitches rather long, and arranged in regular patterns and diapers.

Another linen cloth of the same size has the whole history of Reynard the Fox: a curious subject, it may be thought, for an altar-cloth; but I may remark that I found the same subject in the bosses of the under church.

Besides this there was a magnificent linen dalmatic with apparels beautifully worked and fringed with white, red, white, blue, alternately. The orphreys had been taken off. The apparels of the sleeves were a succession of medallions, six to each sleeve, containing the Twelve Apostles, and the apparel at the bottom of the dalmatic had in front our Lord and two saints, and at the back S. Mary the Virgin, SS. Peter and Paul. The work was most beautiful, and, I have no doubt of the end of the thirteenth century.

I believe there were other things of the same kind, but I fear my curiosity rather disgusted the curator, who was not very anxious to let me see very much of these precious and invaluable relics.

The exterior of S. Katharine will be best understood by my sketches. The most noticeable fact is that some of the tracery in the eastern part is of stone enclosed within a brick arch, and exceedingly good in its effect; proving satisfactorily that this is the real way to use brick and stone together. There is no comparison between these windows and all the other windows in Lübeck. The rest are all ugly: these quite beautiful.

The transept has a double gable, as in the Marien-Kirche, and internally is arranged like an aisle rather than a transept. The west front is curious and indescribable: an irregular assemblage of arcades and windows without order or definiteness, but withal very effective. And as will be seen from the ground-plan, the north aisle being much narrower than the south produces of necessity a great irregularity in the whole elevation, and this irregularity is so carefully managed as really completely to conceal the awkwardness which would otherwise be very apparent. There is no tower, only a turret on the roof, at the intersection of nave, choir, and transept roofs.

In buildings connected with the church is a large library, some cartoons of Overbeck’s, and some work of Godfrey Kneller’s, he, as well as Overbeck, having been born here.

The other churches are not very remarkable. S. Peter’s has a good steeple with metal turrets at the base of the spire, and I believe there is a fine brass there, but I failed to see it.

S. James has a very plain brick tower, and a good triapsidal east end, very much like that of S. Katharine. The steeple is crowned with a modern spire: inside there is a late metal font, of the kind popular in Lübeck--a large vat-like vessel standing on the backs of four kneeling angels, and covered with small and ineffective arcading with figures and subjects. There is a large organ of rather early date, and two curious standard lanterns for carrying lights in procession: they are of very late date, but still so rare as to be worth notice.

S. Giles has no one feature of interest, save its very fine tower and spire.

Of the hospitals the most curious is the Heiligen-Geist-Spital: the ground-plan and general arrangement of which are most remarkable. The chapel is the oblong building at the west end, only two bays in length, but of great width: against its east wall is a rood-screen and loft, under which is the altar, and, on either side of the altar, doors which admit every one under the loft into the hospital. This, like many of our old hospitals (S. Mary’s, Chichester, and Higham Ferrers, are cases in point) is one immense hall, 250 ft. long by 40 ft. wide, and has down its length two passages, and four rows of cubicles for the inmates, and accommodates no less than 150 poor people: truly a most royal provision for the poor. There is an entrance at the sides, but the main entrance is through the chapel, through which there is a constant passing, and it is therefore more like a great hall than a chapel. How much better is the ordinary English arrangement (of which I saw a grand example at Lüneburg), in which the chapel is at the east end of the hall. There the chapel sanctifies the whole, instead of being itself profaned, as is the case at Lübeck.

The hospital was founded by one Bertram Mornewech, in A.D. 1286, and is similar in plan, I believe, to the great Gothic Hospital della Scala at Siena.

In the chapel are some brass screens like those in the Marien-Kirche, but inferior to them. The west front is remarkable and certainly very picturesque, with its three gables and its multitude of turrets.

The most interesting building left to be described is the ruin of the Burg-Kloster. This was a Dominican convent, and at the Reformation was converted into a hospital for the poor. In 1818, a portion of the vaulting of the church fell in, and then they pulled down the rest of the church, sending their stained glass and the organ to the Marien-Kirche, and their triptychs and altar furniture to the Katerinen-Kirche. The north wall only of the church now remains, but this shows traces of stone windows enclosed within brick arches, like those in the apse of S. Katharine, and its destruction is therefore specially to be deplored. The foundation dates from A.D. 1229. The rest of the conventual buildings still in great part remain, but so mixed up with other and modern erections, that it is rather difficult to understand them.

There is, however, a fair cloister on the north side of the church, groined throughout and tolerably perfect: out of this, on one side, is a kind of open groined stall, which looks something like the ambulatories which are so beautiful a feature of our own abbeys; and out of this ambulatory, one enters a large hall once apparently divided by a row of columns down the centre. North of these buildings is a room which seems to have been part of the refectory, remarkable for an exquisite pavement of small tiles--red, black, and white--arranged in an ingenious and intricate pattern, of which I made a careful drawing. My drawing shows the entire remaining portion of this pavement which, it will be seen, continued on beyond the present partition-wall. A central shaft is still left, with an old oak sideboard framed round its base in a most effective manner. In another part of the Burg-Kloster there is a small fragment of similar pavement, which looks as if it had been the hearth under a fire.

Near S. Giles’s church there is another ruined conventual building, S. Anne’s Kloster. This was originally a nunnery of “Clarissernonnen” (I suppose these were nuns of S. Clare, an order who had a few houses in England), but has been converted into a workhouse. Unfortunately a great fire in 1843 consumed the church, and left nothing but the outer walls standing, and when I was there it was used as a place for the workhouse men to break stones or the roads. The church is said to have been designed and built by one Synsingus Hesse of Brunswick, who came to Lübeck in 1502 with five assistants, and completed the work in 1510. With this date the work tallies very well, though I confess there is no mark of the peculiarities of a Brunswick architect, which, as must be known to any who have ever seen that very remarkable city, are decided enough. Part of the west front of the church of S. Anne was built with courses of stone and brick, a most unusual arrangement in Germany, though common enough in Italian pointed, and always very striking in its effect; the domestic buildings retain a good many groined rooms, and a simple cloister in very perfect condition.

We come now to the Rathhaus, whose long line of picturesque front is so great a feature in the principal street of the city. Its history is so confusing and its style so peculiar, that it is very difficult indeed to affix any certain date to its various portions. It was burnt down in A.D. 1276, and there was another fire in A.D. 1358. In A.D. 1389 there were considerable works executed, including the famous cellars, whose still more famous wine was all cleared out by the French, when they sacked the good city in A.D. 1806. The portion of the Rathhaus to the south of the market-place seems to have been built in 1442–44, and the alterations of the Börse towards the street in 1570 and 1673; so that we may well expect a confusing and picturesque mixture of works of various dates. The earliest external portion appears to me to be the screen on the north side in front of the two gabled roofs; and this and the other great screens or parapets towards the market-place and towards the street are the most picturesque portions of the building. They are entirely executed in red and black brick, the cusping being all done in moulded brick. As a rich piece of colour this work is very valuable, but architecturally its sole merit is a kind of picturesqueness, which it certainly has in great force.

The fact is that in northern Germany all the domestic architecture was very full of faults; the fronts of the buildings were very seldom at all ruled by the roof line, and their stepped gables, traceried, mullioned, and pinnacled, had no reference to anything save a desire to look well; and so here some of the most striking portions of the old Rathhaus are done without any regard to constructional wants, and simply as masks of the construction; the fronts are built up to conceal the roofs, arcaded and pinnacled without meaning, and in a style very elaborate as compared with the other brick work throughout the city.

A sketch of perhaps the most magnificent example remaining of north German domestic architecture--the Rathhaus at Münster--will show you how, even with the most beautiful detail and the best possible sculpture, this faulty mode of designing was always persisted in; from Münster in the fourteenth century one may trace it going into the brick districts to the north and--as at Lüneburg--filling entire towns with its extravagancies, and then settling down, as we find it at Lübeck, into a regular system of stepped gables and panelled façades, beyond which the dream of house-builders never went. I confess to having been sorely disappointed in the street architecture of Lübeck. In the first place everything except the churches, hospitals, Rathhaus, and gateways, is painted white, or whitewashed in the most ruthless manner, and the architectural merit of the houses before they were whitewashed must have been very small. The houses at the side of the Heiligen-Geist-Spital are the best specimens of the kind of elevation most in favour, and will, I think, quite justify my strictures, though they are less objectionable than most, in that the gables follow the roof line instead of being sham.

I have left until the last the town gateways, which are certainly two of the most effective I have ever seen. The Holsteiner-Thor has two spire-like roofs at its extremities, which are very effective, and its front towards the town is really a magnificent specimen of the good effect of a great quantity of arcading. The outer front of the gate is much less ornamental. In the string-courses there is a great deal of inlaid terra-cotta ornament. The date of this gateway is about A.D. 1477. The Burg-Thor and the buildings on the town side form about as picturesque a group as can well be imagined. It has all been lately restored, and, I fear, _painted:_ the colour of the red and black bricks savouring to my eye uncommonly of artificial colour; but one can scarce imagine anything more strikingly picturesque than the whole group. The other side of the gate is almost exactly the same; but standing by itself, without the picturesque buildings on either side, is not nearly so effective.

All that I had heard of Lübeck made me promise myself a great treat in the study of the old brick buildings and the old treatment of brick. I must confess, however, that this was not so good or so satisfactory as I had expected, and that it is certainly very inferior to the Italian brick work. It is generally coarsely done, and there is but little attempted in the way of tracery, and that little is never very effective. I saw nothing, for instance, at all comparable to such brick work as one sees at Verona, Mantua, and Cremona; and I doubt much whether Germany produces any which can be compared to it. Except in one instance, and then only to a very slight extent, there is no attempt at all at mixing stone with brick, save at the quoins of the towers, where there are always immense blocks of stone, intended for strength, but contributing, I suspect, to the weakness which is quite a characteristic of all the churches in Lübeck, Hamburg, Lüneburg, and generally throughout this brick district. The brick churches of Italy are remarkable in that they owe much of their beautiful effect either to the mixture of stone with brick, or to the exquisite moulding of the brick, and the care and delicacy with which it was built; and one observes that whilst in Italy all the buildings have an air of refinement, in northern Germany they have an air of great coarseness, to which, perhaps, the entire absence of what can fairly be called window tracery in a great degree conduces.

Something may, however, be learnt even from the failure of other men, and so some points may well be attended to in this German brick work. And first it teaches us, distinctly and unmistakably, that brick is no material for window traceries; the necessity of using it ends either in the repetition of very simple and ugly windows, such as are almost universal in Lübeck; or, as in the Stadt-Haus, and again in the very remarkable church of S. Katharine, at Brandenburg, in the eternal repetition of the same small piece of moulded tracery, which, of necessity not very good in itself, becomes, by much repetition, quite hateful. And the effect is painful in the extreme upon the whole practice of art: in all cases, without any exception, I believe, where men have condescended to attempt to execute traceries or carvings in brick moulded in this way, the tendency has been, naturally enough, to repeat for ever things which by repetition become cheap. _One_ moulded piece of brick tracery would be dearer than one like it in stone; but multiply it a hundred or a thousand times, and it becomes infinitely cheaper, but who can say by how much more infinitely tedious and unartistic! So at Brandenburg, crockets, crocketed gablets, component parts of tracery, and the like, are repeated over and over again, in a manner which is really marvellous; and because it was necessary to do this, immense sham fronts, sham parapets, and the like, must be raised, in order to display all the resources which were at their command. Now this is very poor architecture, very vile art; and it requires no argument to prove that it is only the natural and certain result of the attempt to use materials out of their proper place, and in a way in which it was never intended they should be used. Far worse would be an attempt to mould clay, so that it should counterfeit the work of nature; and so, in addition to the destruction of all art by its endless repetitions, insult God’s handiwork by counterfeiting stone quarried from the bowels of the earth.

The Lübeck churches show us, however, in other respects, what great things may really be done, and done well and naturally, in brick. You may form mouldings to any extent, because each moulded brick tells its own tale, does its own work; and mouldings, so far from not bearing repetition, gain by it. All the windows in a noble church require varied traceries, but it were as well that no two of them should vary in their mouldings. Here, therefore, the reproductive power of the moulder is most valuable; so, too, is it in all forms of ornament (as, e.g., the billet, chevron, and the like) which become ornamental only by repetition, and not in any way by reason of art or skill in the man who works them. These are absolutely better in brick than in stone, because, as no thought and no taste are necessary in the man who carves them, it were better the human intellect should be as little as possible deadened by working upon them. The windows of S. Katharine, Lübeck, show how these moulded bricks may be used in conjunction with stone traceries, and with admirable effect, when compared with the attempts at tracery in brick which this and other churches here exhibit.

But one of the most important facts which we can learn here is, that brick is not only good outside, but just as much inside a church. All the Lübeck churches are built, inside and out, with red brick; most unfortunately, this has all been whitewashed, but I think we may have faith enough in the men who built them to be sure that they would not have been built with brick had not the effect been good. For myself, I am persuaded that they were right in so doing; because I have seen in Italy the wonderfully solemn effect produced in this way, and have since tested it myself. In truth, no red brick building should ever be plastered inside, save where it is intended to introduce paintings of some kind more brilliant than the colour of the bricks.

On the whole, therefore, though the brick work of Lübeck is far inferior, in delicacy and beauty, to that which I have seen in Italy, there is much to be learnt from it, and much proof to be obtained, if proof be needed, that brick is really a most noble and serviceable material, and one which, wherever it is the material of the district, ought invariably and unhesitatingly to be used.

But I feel that, in criticising its brick work, I have been led into abusing old Lübeck almost too much. Perhaps I ought only to express my grateful recollection of all the treasures which she still possesses,--of her screens, her church furniture, her spacious interiors, and her many picturesque features of antiquarian and ecclesiological interest, her triptychs, her brasses, and her gateways,--rather than attempt to draw a parallel between her and Italy; between the stern ruggedness of the north, and the sunny softness and delicacy of the south; between, moreover, a city built as it were in a day,--for Lübeck’s rise was sudden almost beyond all precedent, without a history, and without older days to teach and to correct her,--and a land whose memories of the past and associations with old art were, even in the Middle Ages, well nigh as great, and as valuable in their influence on the mind of her people, as they can be even at the present day. More just it is, perhaps, only to be thankful for all the pleasures with which my three days’ sojourn in this noble old city was full even to overflowing; and (forgetful of the faults of her architects) to dwell more upon the lessons which their works cannot fail to teach us, if we will only lovingly and patiently study and examine them.

II

NAUMBURG CATHEDRAL

I reached Naumburg late at night in a tremendous storm; but the sun rose cheeringly, and I started early for the cathedral fearful of disappointment, as I had spent half the previous day in a mistaken attempt to find something interesting at Merseburg,--a place against which it is only right to warn all ecclesiologists. At Naumburg my fate was happier. The first view of the exterior is not very striking. A fair apsidal choir with a tower rising on either side, Romanesque at the base, and finished in late third-pointed, does not rise above the picturesque, and gives but small promise of the excessive interest of the interior. The plan is curious. A late Romanesque, or very early-pointed nave finished with eastern and western apsidal choirs, and separated from both of them by rood-screens; that to the eastern choir Romanesque, that to the western of most exquisite early pointed, and both of them coeval with the portions of the main fabric to which they belong. The eastern choir extends across the transepts, and is raised considerably above them, with solid stone parcloses, arcaded on the faces towards the transepts with semicircular arches, a kind of parclose not uncommon in the churches in this part of Germany.

Under the whole of the choir is a crypt entered from the transept, and in the angles between the transepts and the choir are towers, the lower stages of which are open to the transepts and form chapels, whose altars stand in small apsidal projections on the east face of the tower. A door on either side of the sanctuary leads by a staircase in the thickness of the wall to rooms above the chapels in the tower. The entrance to the choir is through the old rood-screen by doors on either side of the altar, and by doors in the parcloses, reached by long flights of steps in the transepts. The nave is divided into three groining bays, each bay subdivided and having two arches into the aisles. The western choir has one bay and a five-sided apse. On either side of it is a narrow passage leading to staircases which lead to rooms above some chapels, which have now to be mentioned. They form the base of towers at the west end of the aisles, but project considerably beyond them: only one of these towers has been built; the other is carried up and finished externally as though it was a transept, and produces at first some confusion when seen from the exterior. These tower chapels are very curious. That on the south side has a circular central shaft, decreasing in size to the capital, and the vaulting has four ribs springing from corbels in the angles of the chapel in a semicircular arch to the cap of the column, and there are no other ribs. In the _east_ wall is a small semicircular recess, in which still stands the original altar with a double footpace. The north tower chapel is almost exactly like the other, save that it has a polygonal central shaft, and the recess for the altar is rectangular. Both chapels are lighted with small round-headed windows in their western faces. From this description it will be seen that the ground-plan of this church is so curiously alike at its eastern and western ends, as to be somewhat confusing at first.

And now to describe this most interesting church in detail. The eastern choir-screen is most remarkable. It has admirably carved capitals, and its three western arches (which are semicircular) rest on delicate clusters of shafts. The original doorways still remain, and in front of them steps, arranged in semicircles radiating from the centre of the door, which lead up into the choir. No doubt an altar once stood under this screen, but this has been destroyed in order to convert it into a pew! The front of the screen too is so much obscured by a modern gallery, and by the reredos of the Lutheran altar, that it is impossible to say how it was finished: there seemed to be traces of a vesica with sculpture just over the centre arch. Entering the choir by this screen, one finds all the old arrangements undisturbed. Between the two western doors there are three stalls with canopies, and on either side against the stone parcloses eleven stalls and ten subsellae. In the midst stand three ancient, heavy square desks for office books, and upon these five most magnificent books, well bound and of astonishing size, still maintain their old place. They are all manuscript on vellum, and two of them have very large illuminations of subjects, and foliage of very admirable and bold character. I never saw such magnificent books on their own proper desks,--never, I think any of such grand size anywhere. The stalls are not particularly good, and are of late date, with immense finials, of a kind I had met before at Halberstadt. A rise of several steps divides the choir from the first bay of the sanctuary, which is long and without furniture, save some late stalls, which do not seem to have any business where they are placed. This bay of the choir terminates the transitional work, which is carried throughout the whole church, with the exception of the eastern apse and the western choir. It is of the earliest pointed, very simple and bold in all its details; the piers looking rather like Romanesque in their section and capitals, carved in the most admirable manner. The foliage is all disposed in circles, being regular and geometrical and invariably kept severely and carefully to a regular outline; it is an example of the very perfection of that kind of conventional foliage, of which some of the early capitals at Venice are such admirable specimens, and I think in no way inferior to them. The groining throughout is very simple, with diagonal and transverse ribs. The eastern apse is an addition in most admirable middle-pointed, and (save the upper stages of the towers) the latest work in the whole fabric. The section of the groining shafts is particularly elaborate and good; corbels of foliage inferior to the rest of the carving throughout the church supported figures under canopies at a height of about eight feet from the floor, but the figures are all gone. A very bold string runs round the apse at this point under a passage-way in the wall, which is reached by a staircase between the choir and the tower-chapel apses. The windows are of three lights, and have good geometrical tracery, and the apse is well groined with boldly moulded ribs, the boss in the centre being four ivy leaves. In the sanctuary stand four oak sedilia of the thirteenth century, with open arcaded backs and carved ends, the carving peculiar, but the whole a very remarkable work and very perfect. The chapels in the towers on either side of the choir are not in the old state, one being used for rubbish, and the other as a vestry: above the former a room in the tower is used as a receptacle for hardware! Perhaps the _Prediger_ deals in it! The crypt under the choir is very perfect and fine. We had an illumination of it, and consequently a careful examination. The capitals are all carved, and the arches all semicircular. It is divided by shafts, some of which are clustered, into three spaces in width, and in the length there are two bays under the choir, then a solid wall with a doorway, and then five bays, and an apse of three bays. The old altar still remains.

In the transepts there is little to notice, save that there is an old altar in each. The well-like effect of these German transepts, in which the choir is continued across with heavy stone parcloses of great height, is most unpleasant. In this case the parcloses are no less than 16 feet high from the floor of the transept; and, owing to the great elevation of the choir, the floor of the crypt is only 4 ft. 6 in. lower than the transept floor.

No one, going into the nave of the church as now arranged, would believe that he was in a church of more than very mediocre interest. Between all the columns are small tenements, painted white, carefully roofed in and glazed, and papered with whatever paper the fancy and good taste of their several proprietors suggest. In front of these are rows of pews, arranged longitudinally, and all painted white; and as the aisles are by this arrangement practically lost to the church, galleries are built in them, to supply the created want.[78] A white wooden screen behind the Lutheran altar conceals the eastern rood-screen; whilst another white wooden partition, out of the centre of which projects the pulpit, serves also to conceal the rood-screen of the western choir. The whole arrangement is, in short, just the most judicious that could possibly be imagined for the entire annihilation of the architectural effect of the interior.

This western choir-screen is certainly the most striking I have ever seen even in this land of screens. No description can, however, do justice to its exquisite beauty, dependent as this is, to a great extent, on the exceeding originality and beauty of the foliage, which is all varied, and all executed from natural models. The doorway is double, and rather narrow; the doors of iron, cross-framed; and they form the only openings in the screen, the rest being quite solid, arcaded on the eastern side, and on the western (that is, on the inside, or choir side), remarkable chiefly for the exquisite open staircases on each side of the door leading to the loft. On the eastern side, against the doorway, are a Crucifix and SS. Mary and John; but these seemed to be of later date than the door. The figure of our Lord seated in the tympanum above is no doubt original; it is very curious, being partly painted, partly carved, and reminded me of an early picture, managed in the same way, which I saw in the gallery at Berlin. Above the arcading, on either side of the doorway, are a series of subjects, the execution of which (with the exception of the two last, which are not original) is marvellously good. They are, beginning at the south--the Last Supper, the Betrayal, ditto (S. Peter smiting Malchus), the Denial of S. Peter, our Lord before Pilate, the Scourging, Bearing the Cross. The open staircases on the western side of the screen are remarkable for the beauty of the succession of detached shafts, with finely carved capitals, which support them.

There are no fittings in this western choir save the altar, the mensa of which is 8 ft. 5 in. long, by 5 ft. 11 in. wide, and 3 ft. 8 in. high; and this faces west, as all the altars throughout the church do: so showing its back (in the centre of which is the usual closet) to any one entering through the door of the screen from the nave. It has a double footpace. The detail of this choir is earlier and bolder than that of the eastern choir; the windows of two lights, with very bold monials, and circles sexfoiled, with soffit cusping in the head. The groining-shafts are good; and, as in the other choir, there is a very bold string under a passage-way in front of the windows, at about 8 feet from the floor. The windows do not fill up the whole width of the bays, and on each side have small open arches, which add very much to the richness of the whole effect. Against the groining-shafts are figures, very well sculptured, and standing under canopies of very varied design, finished at the top with what seem like models of churches. Some of the windows retain some exquisite stained glass. The mouldings throughout this apse are exactly like those of the screen, and the foliage was evidently carved by the same hand,--that of as great a master in his day as was the artist who carved the early capitals in the nave. I think I have now described the whole of the interior.