Circular Churches—Church Furniture—Civil Architecture.
IN adopting the pointed style, the Germans almost wholly abandoned their old favourite circular form; the Liebfrauen Church at Trèves (Woodcut No. 695) being almost the only really important example of a church in the style approaching to a rotunda. Chapter-houses are as rare in Germany as in France, and those that are found are not generally circular in either country. There is a baptistery attached to the cathedral at Meissen, and one or two other insignificant examples elsewhere; but the most pleasing object of this class is the Anna Chapel, attached to the principal church at Heiligenstadt. It is said that it always was dedicated to the sainted mother of the Virgin, but it would require more than tradition to prove that it was not originally designed as a baptistery or a tomb-house. Be this as it may, it is one of the most pleasing specimens of its class anywhere to be found, and so elegant as to make us regret the rarity of such structures.
[Illustration: 761. Anna Chapel at Heiligenstadt. (From Puttrich, ‘Denkmäler.’)]
The churches of Germany are not generally rich in architectural furniture. Few rood-lofts are found spanning from pillar to pillar of the choir like that at the Madeleine of Troyes (Woodcut No. 669); and though some of the screens that separate the choirs of the churches are rich, they are seldom of good design. The two at Naumburg are perhaps as good as any of their class in Germany. Generally they were used as the _lectorium_—virtually the pulpit—of the churches. In most instances, however, the detached pulpit in the nave was substituted for these, and there are numerous examples of richly-carved pulpits, but none of beautiful design. In most instances they are overloaded with ornament, and many of them disfigured with quirks and quibbles, and all the vagaries of later German art.
The fonts are seldom good or deserving of attention, and the original altars have almost all been removed, either from having fallen to decay, or to make way for some more favourite arrangement of modern times.
The “Sacraments Häuschen” (the receptacle for the sacred elements of the Communion) is a peculiar article of furniture frequently found in German churches, and in some of those of Belgium, though very rare in France and unknown in England, but on which the German artists seem to have lavished more pains than on almost any other article of church decoration. Those in St. Lawrence’s Church at Nuremberg and at Ulm are perhaps the most extraordinary pieces of elaborate architecture ever executed in stone, and have always been looked on by the Germans as chefs-d’œuvre of art. Had they been able, they would have delighted in introducing the same extravagances into external art: fortunately the elements forced them to confine them to their interiors. Nothing, however, can show more clearly what was the tendency of their art, and to what they aspired, than these singular erections, which, notwithstanding their absurdity, considering their materials, must excite our wonder, like the concentric balls of the Chinese. To some extent also they claim our admiration for the lightness and the elegance of their structure. Simplicity is not the characteristic of the German mind. A difficulty conquered is what it glories in, and patient toil is not a means only, but an end, and its expression often excites in Germany more admiration than either loftier or purer art.