THE LATE GOTHIC STYLE C. I2$Q~C. IjOQ
date of Bristol. There are occasional Romanesque aisled halls in Ger-
many, even one (on a small scale) as early as 1015. It may thus not be
necessary to suppose connections with the aisled haUs of South-
West France. Aisled halls in Gothic forms were built directly the style
had been taken over. As in England, the new inspiration came pro-
bably from the refectories and chapter-houses of German (chiefly
Cistercian) monasteries. The type spread during the second half of
the 13th century, and assumed its German characteristics: wide
arcades and wide aisles. These, needless to say, invite the eye, even
more than the narrower opening of Bristol, to wander off the main
Gothic lines of vision. Diagonal vistas spread on all sides. Space
seems to flow directionlessly around us while we walk in the church.
A proof of the master builders' conscious development are the cases
in which a choir in the new Late Gothic style was added without
any aesthetic mediation to an earlier nave. This is for instance the
case at St. Lawrence's, Nuremberg, of 1445-72 (pi. Xiiv). Having
walked along the nave in the rigidly prescribed way of the Roman-
esque or earlier Gothic basilica, the entrance into the wider and higher
choir with nave and aisles of identical width comes as a startling
surprise* Bays are wider, piers slenderer, vaults of a rich star-like
configuration (as created by the English nearly 200 years before),
weighing down the vertical push of the piers. These have no capitals
(again a motif of English priority), and so the streams of energy con-
ducted upwards flew away undammed into ribs extending in all
directions.1 The sculptural decoration of the choir emphasises its
spatial freedom. The magnificent stone spire of the tabernacle (now,
I understand, destroyed by a bomb) rises in an asymmetrical position
into the vault, and the huge locket of Veit Stoss's wood-carved
Annunciation hangs down, joyful and transparent, into the space in
front of the altar, so that you see it against the light of the central
upper window. There are two rows of windows all the way round,
and this, as the close pattern of the star-vault, adds weight to the
horizontals. The classic Gothic excelsior is effectively (and no doubt
consciously) broken. The earth claims her own against heaven. The
clouds of the Reformation were gathering. Luther was born before
* Some of the latest and best German churches of this period (e.g., Annabcrg)
have octagonal piers 'with concave sides—a particularly dear indication of the
tendency to make the space of nave and aisles surge up from all directions against
the stone divisions. The same type of piers occurs in Cotswold churches (Chipping
Campden). Flying ribs as in the sacristy of Bristol, incidentally, are also a speciality
of the boldest of these Late Gothic German churches.
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