1 00:00:00,700 --> 00:00:08,730 OK, good morning, nice to see you. In this series of. 2 00:00:08,730 --> 00:00:15,990 Talks and, of course, which was amusing on. An introduction to art history. 3 00:00:15,990 --> 00:00:27,260 There have been many exotic journeys to ancient from Syria to Egypt to different parts of Asia, parts of the world, 4 00:00:27,260 --> 00:00:35,710 the party, of course, to enjoy and stopped the content of the visual culture of these different parts of the. 5 00:00:35,710 --> 00:00:43,180 But also to shake up our preconceptions and our definitions or methods of dealing with a discipline about history. 6 00:00:43,180 --> 00:00:46,420 And each of these, as we've been saying problematise, 7 00:00:46,420 --> 00:00:58,350 is some of the assumptions built into an art history that was born in Western Europe and continues to. 8 00:00:58,350 --> 00:01:07,960 Questioning itself, debating its role, but continues to use terms and to offer it with assumptions that were born particularly far. 9 00:01:07,960 --> 00:01:13,740 This is, of course, part of the intention of this course, a very important part of the intention of this whole course as it is to help 10 00:01:13,740 --> 00:01:18,390 ourselves to think a little bit about where we want to take that discipline. 11 00:01:18,390 --> 00:01:24,420 In addition to what we might do with the particular contents of these different Muslim countries and problematise in this case, 12 00:01:24,420 --> 00:01:27,570 something we can also do by looking at Western art. 13 00:01:27,570 --> 00:01:42,520 And today, we're just going to look with the world that architecture in European context impacts specifically in the context of the later Middle Ages. 14 00:01:42,520 --> 00:01:47,210 And in doing so, to think a little bit about these cathedrals we'll be looking at. 15 00:01:47,210 --> 00:01:59,570 But also to think about how we deal with the subject of architecture, actually, and how we conceptualise a field of visual production, 16 00:01:59,570 --> 00:02:10,550 which in modern times has come to be separated from other things that people do, other cultural activities, including other visual activities. 17 00:02:10,550 --> 00:02:18,900 And in fact, the way we understand the history of architecture has been really quite problematise by this. 18 00:02:18,900 --> 00:02:27,840 Confusion as to how buildings have been made of is still surrounding the building, 19 00:02:27,840 --> 00:02:37,470 in particular of great churches in mediaeval in mediaeval Europe in the 19th century 20 00:02:37,470 --> 00:02:43,440 when people started to be interested again in the mediaeval parts of Europe. 21 00:02:43,440 --> 00:02:51,510 There was a very widespread myth and legend that the great buildings of the very has been built by ordinary day. 22 00:02:51,510 --> 00:02:59,660 People are driven by piety or by monks. 23 00:02:59,660 --> 00:03:09,020 Since then, the 20th century historical research has turned up the names of hundreds of professionals, masons, carpenters, glaziers, 24 00:03:09,020 --> 00:03:18,620 who work on building sites, and we've got a rather different image now of the professionalisation of the field of building. 25 00:03:18,620 --> 00:03:28,670 But what's still confusing to so many observers of these buildings now is the modern notion of the architect. 26 00:03:28,670 --> 00:03:34,640 Because the profession of the grand designer will think of examples of modern architects who are shaping our world, 27 00:03:34,640 --> 00:03:41,240 who are changing the skyline of London, who are putting up prestige museums. 28 00:03:41,240 --> 00:03:51,410 This grandiose and prestigious role, Izabel actually when you think architects were professionals, they're professionals. 29 00:03:51,410 --> 00:03:59,990 As recently as the late 19th century and not before the separation, two of the high arts of architecture, 30 00:03:59,990 --> 00:04:14,540 together with sculpture and painting, are also, as you know, indeed, that separation is also a renaissance of later a major phenomenon. 31 00:04:14,540 --> 00:04:24,850 But in particular, architecture has been further distinguished by the professionalisation in modern times. 32 00:04:24,850 --> 00:04:29,010 If Renzo Piano turns up to look at the Shard while it's going up, 33 00:04:29,010 --> 00:04:36,300 it's once in a blue moon and put on a hard hat and we'll go around in this nice Armani suit and 34 00:04:36,300 --> 00:04:40,920 not get too close to the workmen who are connecting the wires or chain and fitting the plumbing. 35 00:04:40,920 --> 00:04:47,700 So call for the visit. There's a disconnect now between the designer and the building site, which is very, 36 00:04:47,700 --> 00:04:53,670 very different from that which operated in the mediaeval past and indeed, in the context of. 37 00:04:53,670 --> 00:04:58,260 Architectural construction in other cultures. Some of the Masons. 38 00:04:58,260 --> 00:05:00,270 And we'll see this actually a little bit later. 39 00:05:00,270 --> 00:05:06,810 Who works on building sites in the Middle Ages did acquire individual reputations of quite high fame and prestige. 40 00:05:06,810 --> 00:05:15,930 But their training and experience was on the building trades, stone cutters and construction engineers, as we would say. 41 00:05:15,930 --> 00:05:24,430 This was common to all of their profession. And the master Mason on a site who would act as the overall designer. 42 00:05:24,430 --> 00:05:37,220 And it was usually called the master of the works. The Maricel and the master of the world would never be wholly detached from the German team. 43 00:05:37,220 --> 00:05:43,730 So this separation of the design from the knowledge of how to build is a face of evil. 44 00:05:43,730 --> 00:05:52,090 But the larger issue you think about here, when we think about creation in not only in architecture, but in other fields, 45 00:05:52,090 --> 00:05:59,420 and indeed the separation in the field of architecture is a peculiarly Western phenomenon, which has been imposed, as I say, 46 00:05:59,420 --> 00:06:07,390 during the last five centuries, and particularly during the last hundred and fifty years outside this particular Western and modern tradition, 47 00:06:07,390 --> 00:06:14,510 the integration of the design and the manufacture which we find on the building sites of the mediaeval cathedrals. 48 00:06:14,510 --> 00:06:21,400 We'll look at some examples now has been equally characteristic of most cultural production in history. 49 00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:30,830 Some very old, actually, about architecture. The way it's been conceptualised and actually the way it's been studied academically. 50 00:06:30,830 --> 00:06:38,000 Architectural historians tend to be a breed apart. They work in the departments that architectural history, 51 00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:42,740 or more particularly most architectural historians in academia, work in architecture departments. 52 00:06:42,740 --> 00:06:50,160 That's why there are positions for architectural historians and that's what they tend to find themselves lecturing to. 53 00:06:50,160 --> 00:06:58,460 More or less interested would be Renzo Piano's of the future. 54 00:06:58,460 --> 00:07:07,490 But Matthew Walker, who was an architectural historian, was here for a few years, just as moved on a post in America just now in this department. 55 00:07:07,490 --> 00:07:16,670 Would he hear you completely agree with this? Is that this this this and perception of what this imaginary of how buildings supposedly were 56 00:07:16,670 --> 00:07:25,460 created by a special breed of person that created has created also within academic art history, 57 00:07:25,460 --> 00:07:34,600 a notion that architecture is something separate from other fields of physical production. 58 00:07:34,600 --> 00:07:43,030 Now, another preconception about great buildings of the Middle Ages is that they were conceived as grand unified designs. 59 00:07:43,030 --> 00:07:54,930 As well as it were, Renzo Piano's shot. And yes, I think it's going to be something interesting to learn from this. 60 00:07:54,930 --> 00:08:02,950 And yet the realisation of a completely integrated building design was extremely rare. 61 00:08:02,950 --> 00:08:05,190 Actually, it's extremely rare today. 62 00:08:05,190 --> 00:08:15,980 There aren't many Renzo pianos, there aren't many shards, there aren't many Bilbao museums for Frank Gehry to conceive as a totality. 63 00:08:15,980 --> 00:08:21,740 In practise today, certainly in these mediaeval examples we'll be looking at, 64 00:08:21,740 --> 00:08:26,960 construction was usually a matter of partial intervention within pre-existing structures 65 00:08:26,960 --> 00:08:30,830 and only rarely was a building constructed in a single campaign from its foundations. 66 00:08:30,830 --> 00:08:36,170 And as we'll see, this gives rise to local debates about what's appropriate, 67 00:08:36,170 --> 00:08:44,420 should things be changed to get the same discussions which draw in others beyond well beyond, 68 00:08:44,420 --> 00:08:51,710 in some cases, to the practitioners who are actually going to put the building up and building up 69 00:08:51,710 --> 00:08:59,060 the best chance you might have if you wanted something exciting new was a fire. 70 00:08:59,060 --> 00:09:17,960 Indeed, the Middle Ages gave many five. In the late 12th century, Katzenberg witnessed the murder of Thomas Beckett in front of his own high alter, 71 00:09:17,960 --> 00:09:24,340 the Cathedral of Canterbury in eleven seventy, caused a storm across Christendom. 72 00:09:24,340 --> 00:09:41,630 As you all know, something a little bit something about. And the monks of the Cathedral of Cathedral prior Canterbury were quick to goose. 73 00:09:41,630 --> 00:09:47,490 Mourn his death and then promote the cult of the martyred saints, the victim of royal. 74 00:09:47,490 --> 00:09:58,370 The royal intervention, which which which many felt it had exaggerated, to say the least, 75 00:09:58,370 --> 00:10:05,260 and which did indeed catalyse the beginnings of what became an enormous one of the great pilgrimage cults. 76 00:10:05,260 --> 00:10:10,250 Like many of Europe, four years after the death of Beckett. 77 00:10:10,250 --> 00:10:20,230 I mean, he's still in the early 70s in London before a fire destroyed a very large part of the. 78 00:10:20,230 --> 00:10:28,660 Especially at the East End. And we have from one of the monks, a who we a chronicle during this period, 79 00:10:28,660 --> 00:10:40,210 a vivid account of the process of consultation with various French and English builders, which followed the monk was called Joey's Jabez Monk. 80 00:10:40,210 --> 00:10:45,820 And I've put his text and one or two other quotations, if you want them on the back of the. 81 00:10:45,820 --> 00:10:52,130 On one side, if you have your hand up just in case, it's useful for the future. 82 00:10:52,130 --> 00:10:54,570 What he seems to be doing. 83 00:10:54,570 --> 00:11:04,140 Why does he write all this down, it seems to me actually is covering up a debate and anxiety, perhaps differences of opinion as to what should happen. 84 00:11:04,140 --> 00:11:06,570 He says he says of William of Science, 85 00:11:06,570 --> 00:11:16,980 who was brought from Sunset in northern France to advise on what could be the east end of the the burned cathedral. 86 00:11:16,980 --> 00:11:23,160 And Jobi says he spent many days with the monks in a careful study of the burned walls above and below, inside and out. 87 00:11:23,160 --> 00:11:30,300 But for the time being, avoided saying what would have to be done in order not to shock them too much in their enfeebled state of mind. 88 00:11:30,300 --> 00:11:35,760 But he kept on getting ready for what was needed for the work, either personal or through agents. 89 00:11:35,760 --> 00:11:39,050 He goes on to say arrangements were made for bringing stones from overseas. 90 00:11:39,050 --> 00:11:45,300 And we know because we can see the building now that this stone was brought from camp in Normandy and William assaults. 91 00:11:45,300 --> 00:11:52,110 He goes on designed ingenious machinery for loading and unloading the ships and for the transport of mortar and stones. 92 00:11:52,110 --> 00:12:01,980 He handed templates for shaping the stones to the carvers who he had taken on and over four years, William of sorts. 93 00:12:01,980 --> 00:12:11,580 This Frenchman is described as having made considerable progress in the course of which he essentially designed this choir. 94 00:12:11,580 --> 00:12:19,240 This east end of Canterbury Cathedral that you see today. 95 00:12:19,240 --> 00:12:29,150 Source in the, say, northeast France, not one northern France, well, from which William had come on well, 96 00:12:29,150 --> 00:12:37,030 clearly he'd been working, had just recently completed its own new building project, The New East End. 97 00:12:37,030 --> 00:12:42,190 And in what was still a very modern and bold manor, 98 00:12:42,190 --> 00:12:51,520 had created a brilliantly high and illuminated east end to frame the the high altar of the cathedral. 99 00:12:51,520 --> 00:13:04,810 With these soaring pointed bolts and with the weights now being carried by the new. 100 00:13:04,810 --> 00:13:13,630 In the 20th century design down through narrow appears to the ground, the weight of the building being concentrated in these fears. 101 00:13:13,630 --> 00:13:25,570 The spaces in between appears to be opened up as never before. In mediaeval times or indeed in any time to glass. 102 00:13:25,570 --> 00:13:32,080 So this is what it just happened that Souls William of is clearly an interesting person to somebody who's looking to rebuild it, 103 00:13:32,080 --> 00:13:36,850 to create a new shrine that will be a pilgrimage shrine for the whole of Europe, for a whole Christendom. 104 00:13:36,850 --> 00:13:44,710 And some of the monks in Canterbury get him over. And this is what this is what results. 105 00:13:44,710 --> 00:13:52,810 And you can see that the it's in three stories, one tall story at the Mississippi grand royal level, 106 00:13:52,810 --> 00:14:00,400 at the level of the nave and the ambulatory around the east and saving in Canterbury. 107 00:14:00,400 --> 00:14:06,980 A less tall gallery level with a passage. 108 00:14:06,980 --> 00:14:15,440 Same here. And then at all ish, pretty tall pastry level with more like less in from above. 109 00:14:15,440 --> 00:14:20,120 And in the case of the Canterbury Eastend illuminating the hiles with what 110 00:14:20,120 --> 00:14:26,690 were now to be the gathered well most of the gathered relics of the martyrs, 111 00:14:26,690 --> 00:14:33,700 the martyred archbishop. In addition, at the very, very far east end of Canterbury Cathedral, another. 112 00:14:33,700 --> 00:14:41,550 A distinctive local one on Beckett was back in the course of the attack by the four nights set by the second on the top 113 00:14:41,550 --> 00:14:52,200 of Beckett's head was cut right off and police and the corona top of his head was it was venerated as a separate relic. 114 00:14:52,200 --> 00:14:56,280 In what was called the corona or the crown of the cathedral at the East End. 115 00:14:56,280 --> 00:15:10,410 So there's an additional chapel that to house that. Was even this short passage from the Canterbury Chronicle here, is that for us? 116 00:15:10,410 --> 00:15:17,370 Insignificantly shows us I think it is the. 117 00:15:17,370 --> 00:15:24,330 Complexity that arises in the context of patronage and availability, 118 00:15:24,330 --> 00:15:28,860 where there will certainly have been division on the monks as to what should happen, 119 00:15:28,860 --> 00:15:35,580 because this is an ancient and the sacred building, it's got older relics and Saxon saints venerated for hundreds of years. 120 00:15:35,580 --> 00:15:41,970 And there would have been a constituency urging the re the reparation of the building and exactly. 121 00:15:41,970 --> 00:15:47,910 And so forth, and nothing in, as we would say, architectural terms. 122 00:15:47,910 --> 00:15:53,160 I think this kind of grandeur, height might have been seen in these islands before. 123 00:15:53,160 --> 00:15:56,910 So this is a radical novelty and some would have been resistant. 124 00:15:56,910 --> 00:16:10,650 And what I think one detects something of that resistance in order not to shock them too severely and so on in Japan cherishes account. 125 00:16:10,650 --> 00:16:15,670 The patrons then, with their pockets, varying views, play a key role, play a key role. 126 00:16:15,670 --> 00:16:21,320 But William assaults the master of the works is the guy who sources the material, too. 127 00:16:21,320 --> 00:16:29,650 Who gives the moulds for me? For the arcades. And some savvy to the carvers who oversees the operation. 128 00:16:29,650 --> 00:16:36,160 And he makes this a tangible reality. In the fifth year, in the towards the end of the 70s, William of South had an accident. 129 00:16:36,160 --> 00:16:39,850 He fell from the scaffolding and after a while he had to. 130 00:16:39,850 --> 00:16:47,740 He had to retire. He went back to France culture. And he seems to have left no complete plan to his successor. 131 00:16:47,740 --> 00:16:51,790 This is something which if we look closely at the work in the East End, 132 00:16:51,790 --> 00:16:58,900 we can see there are some disjuncture is and it's not a completely seamless operation. 133 00:16:58,900 --> 00:17:05,440 The man who took over also called William, but he was William. The Englishman completed the design. 134 00:17:05,440 --> 00:17:12,550 As I say, this is this is that is this the same design? More or less of the original pattern. 135 00:17:12,550 --> 00:17:23,770 By eleven eighty one. So the project was not, as it were, the inspired moment of a complete vision on the part of one patron. 136 00:17:23,770 --> 00:17:37,450 It was a profitable piece of profitable because it was a huge success as a major centre, of course, for hundreds of years. 137 00:17:37,450 --> 00:17:42,010 The whole design of the building being conceived as a kind of giant reliquary. 138 00:17:42,010 --> 00:17:45,760 Up until this point. Relics of the Saints were kept underground. 139 00:17:45,760 --> 00:17:50,320 You came into the older churches and you went as a pilgrim down into the ground to see the. 140 00:17:50,320 --> 00:17:56,380 To see the shrine here. For the first time, the relics have been brought up. 141 00:17:56,380 --> 00:18:02,140 This was the plan from the start. And not only are they up, but the raised the high altar is raised with relation to the. 142 00:18:02,140 --> 00:18:07,570 You can see some of the steps going up here from the level of the nave. So those coming in. 143 00:18:07,570 --> 00:18:14,340 This is still the experience. If you get a country coming to the west and you look down the nave and then raised up at the end, 144 00:18:14,340 --> 00:18:20,770 framed and illuminated by these high windows, like in a giant reliquary, as I say, 145 00:18:20,770 --> 00:18:33,100 the hilden from which of course, in the Reformation in the 8th had all the relics carted away 26 cartloads in 1839, 146 00:18:33,100 --> 00:18:46,360 dragged all the riches of Becket Shrine and all the offerings that people had made. 147 00:18:46,360 --> 00:18:53,380 So anyway, the more moral of this is the unpredictability of art and architectural history. 148 00:18:53,380 --> 00:19:00,160 When the hand of code conveniently fails to clear the ground so far. 149 00:19:00,160 --> 00:19:04,850 And, of course, one possibility is that there is a consistent constituency amongst. 150 00:19:04,850 --> 00:19:13,530 The flame. Not at all impossible. But anyway, when the hand of God or anybody else fails to kindle the flames to clear the way for a new building, 151 00:19:13,530 --> 00:19:17,360 and powerful patrons were at times driven to drastic measures. 152 00:19:17,360 --> 00:19:23,740 And I've given his name on your hand out at the beginning of the 13th century to just 153 00:19:23,740 --> 00:19:29,110 a few years later in the context where a number of people are building new churches. 154 00:19:29,110 --> 00:19:40,400 The Bishop of Oaxaca, Gil, dissimulate. In a more high handed fashion, there's not a community of monks either. 155 00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:45,680 He's a bishop. He's got an ambitious and powerful bishop. And according to the local Chronicle, in this case, 156 00:19:45,680 --> 00:19:52,160 it looks that he simply had the old one knocked down in order to get something really splendid put up. 157 00:19:52,160 --> 00:19:58,460 The bishops or his cathedral successor was a very old building and very small suffering from decay in age, 158 00:19:58,460 --> 00:20:04,910 while others in every direction were raising their heads in a wonderfully beautiful style. 159 00:20:04,910 --> 00:20:11,720 Places like sons. So he determined on a new building and that it should be designed by those skilled in the art of masonry, 160 00:20:11,720 --> 00:20:15,410 lest it should be in any way unequals or the other. He had it. 161 00:20:15,410 --> 00:20:27,700 The old one pulls down to the ground so that putting off the decrepitude of antiquity, it might grow young in a more elegant style of normalcy. 162 00:20:27,700 --> 00:20:34,350 But again, nowadays, we're so used to the language of novelty, the newbie, the good, that's it, 163 00:20:34,350 --> 00:20:43,450 that we have to make an effort to think of to to appreciate other cultures in which novelty was not always seen as an undiluted good. 164 00:20:43,450 --> 00:20:48,750 And actually the very word novelty novey tossed in a mediaeval context in the 12th or 13th century. 165 00:20:48,750 --> 00:20:54,370 Context was always a controversial word is not often used with the positive connotations. 166 00:20:54,370 --> 00:21:00,230 And maybe even this Chronicle has a note of irony. The himself is like this. 167 00:21:00,230 --> 00:21:03,780 This is all our bishop. He wanted to be new. He wanted. 168 00:21:03,780 --> 00:21:08,240 He wanted the elegance of Novita as of novelty. 169 00:21:08,240 --> 00:21:18,900 But we certainly have contemporary texts in which nobody's criticised as being a departure from good tradition. 170 00:21:18,900 --> 00:21:27,720 And on the whole, this kind of clean sweep, knock it all down and build a new one was not an option. 171 00:21:27,720 --> 00:21:39,190 At Sundanese, just north of just outside Paris, and Ari are right in the centre of Paris at the beginning of the 12th century, 172 00:21:39,190 --> 00:21:47,890 the abbot Souji again, the spellings are on the sheet up, wanted to see his church rebuilt on a grandiose scale. 173 00:21:47,890 --> 00:21:56,350 And we have Sujiatun writing. Very interesting. Why does he write it at great length, actually, about his project to rebuild the aperture? 174 00:21:56,350 --> 00:22:04,930 Pretty certain images within his monastic community. There were those who thought this was a terrible thing and that he was perhaps so grand ising. 175 00:22:04,930 --> 00:22:13,210 But in any case, he was reckless in dismantling parts of what was a very ancient church that had been founded by Charlemagne, 176 00:22:13,210 --> 00:22:17,170 possibly, according to one legend, even founded by Christ himself. 177 00:22:17,170 --> 00:22:27,850 And here, here, here was about CJK praising the Tea Party, pulled down to his own personal involvement, is inscribed in the building. 178 00:22:27,850 --> 00:22:30,340 There are seven places to this day where you can see, 179 00:22:30,340 --> 00:22:40,570 such as image and read his name here in one of the stained glass windows that survived from his early 20th century work. 180 00:22:40,570 --> 00:22:44,950 You see the kneeling figure of the abbot in his monastic robes. 181 00:22:44,950 --> 00:22:54,190 And so Jarius AB, Albert Szewczyk, the label, just in case you are not sure, not sure which he is and he is. 182 00:22:54,190 --> 00:22:59,940 Or, you know, he was also on the west door as you came in and in other places. 183 00:22:59,940 --> 00:23:04,670 These images and the liveliness of his own tech actually went to books to help protect 184 00:23:04,670 --> 00:23:12,300 the life of his accounts of led modern scholars to come to think of sushi as, 185 00:23:12,300 --> 00:23:17,400 in effect, the designer of Salmoni. And this is quite significant, 186 00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:28,680 given the what we now understand is the impulse of the architectural importance of the building that went up in the 11th, 30s and 40s at Sundanese. 187 00:23:28,680 --> 00:23:38,600 This building is, by all accounts, a crucially important building in the whole history of architecture and human history of Western architecture. 188 00:23:38,600 --> 00:23:50,460 And it is regarded as it's the first of those buildings which by using pointed rather than round arches, even more significantly, 189 00:23:50,460 --> 00:23:59,200 by carrying the stone weight, the weight of the stone building and its roof knocked down through graphic walls, but through. 190 00:23:59,200 --> 00:24:03,220 Actually, quite slender, Piers. 191 00:24:03,220 --> 00:24:10,390 Has broken through to a new understanding of how you can put up a building and how you can create enormous parts of the walls of that building, 192 00:24:10,390 --> 00:24:14,380 which are not structural, simply empties. 193 00:24:14,380 --> 00:24:17,760 They can. They can be they can be as empty or as as light as you like. 194 00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:20,710 They can be filled with glass because they're not structural. 195 00:24:20,710 --> 00:24:30,700 So this combination of height with the arcades and light with the opening of the of the outer walls is here. 196 00:24:30,700 --> 00:24:36,980 First, there are a couple of prepossessing experiments. It doesn't just come completely out of nowhere, but. 197 00:24:36,980 --> 00:24:42,750 The interesting and in sand, any large parts of it were rebuilt in the 13th century, so only parts. 198 00:24:42,750 --> 00:24:51,840 But this is part of this is this is the section remained from Abbot Suitcase and day, enormous importance attached to this and therefore to sushi. 199 00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:55,800 But what is the role of the patron? 200 00:24:55,800 --> 00:25:06,740 How much importance are we going to give to the person who. Chooses to associate his name in writing and images with the building. 201 00:25:06,740 --> 00:25:13,030 He's Abbott, certainly. But although his interest in the project, the patron is very is very clear, 202 00:25:13,030 --> 00:25:23,200 there's no evidence that he had any technical ability to oversee and still less to actually invent the structure, 203 00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:32,950 which others say is no ordinary structure here with its buttresses to support to hold up this newly. 204 00:25:32,950 --> 00:25:45,190 Colonnaded structure and with its new stained glass windows. 205 00:25:45,190 --> 00:25:49,480 One of the most famous of all art historians is one of the most famous civil wars, 206 00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:55,720 historical studies on this building and on sushi Panofsky in Panofsky, 207 00:25:55,720 --> 00:26:03,820 first half of the 20th century seised upon this as a kind of moral case study for the art historian because he felt. 208 00:26:03,820 --> 00:26:17,880 Ah, here we have the formula. We have an intelligent, educated patient who we can actually hypothesise, read certain texts. 209 00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:22,440 And I come to listen. And translated those texts into a blueprint, 210 00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:35,380 a programme for the artisans who would realise his vision and the books that he identified with the very specific book, actually, his book by Angels. 211 00:26:35,380 --> 00:26:43,630 Not a trivial book at all, a very, very extensive and and serious book about angels, very widely known Middle Ages, 212 00:26:43,630 --> 00:26:56,020 attributed to somebody called Dennis Dionysius and Diniz is his book on angels and the angelic hierarchy and talks in a way very in a very 213 00:26:56,020 --> 00:27:08,860 platonic way Christian writing platonic about how divine power is mediated to Earth through successive levels of prisons or as it yes, 214 00:27:08,860 --> 00:27:21,580 as you might say, Lenz's filtering that divine power, that divine light, so that it manifests itself in the diversity of the world. 215 00:27:21,580 --> 00:27:28,030 And conversely, then, the world is a pattern, which, if you read it in the reverse direction, 216 00:27:28,030 --> 00:27:37,350 is through these lenses or angels or angelic spheres leading back to its divine origins. 217 00:27:37,350 --> 00:27:42,940 This was a way of understanding the diversity and the beauty of the world and susur according to see. 218 00:27:42,940 --> 00:27:53,140 Having read this book, wasn't this your book had invited and wanted to make in his building through his treatment of light as 219 00:27:53,140 --> 00:28:00,310 it passes through these coloured windows in his inclusion of many beautifully decorated ornaments? 220 00:28:00,310 --> 00:28:06,610 I have to queue up for the high altar, which he talks about in just these terms. 221 00:28:06,610 --> 00:28:13,930 Beautiful gems, he says, attract the eye and then lead the line upwards to the source of. 222 00:28:13,930 --> 00:28:23,240 All right. Which is which is God. So quite an exciting hypothesis and one which was offered as a model for understanding. 223 00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:34,630 Actually, it's not too grand to say the history of our intelligent, educated patron can direct the relevant artisans to realise that their design. 224 00:28:34,630 --> 00:28:41,330 That's why it's a significant model. 225 00:28:41,330 --> 00:28:49,680 But there's no getting away from the fact if you look closely at the masonry of a building like this or we can leave from where you're sitting, 226 00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:55,370 it's it's not easy to cut these standards and place them and make them and make this work. 227 00:28:55,370 --> 00:29:02,920 I mentioned there are a couple of presidents from the years before, from just a very few years before, a decade before this, a very nearby church. 228 00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:13,490 Martin. Somewhat under Schantz and Martin, also north of Paris, shows Masons experimenting with just this formula on a small part of the statue. 229 00:29:13,490 --> 00:29:22,490 And you can see that at the time. You see that that the that the they got the weight from the ceilings started to crumble. 230 00:29:22,490 --> 00:29:29,990 And it's still today. And it's locked in a distorted breakage, which which is clear, you can see is original. 231 00:29:29,990 --> 00:29:33,680 These were masons who were experimenting with new ideas. 232 00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:44,180 The patrons certainly wouldn't have been able to understand what they were doing in terms of the practicalities. 233 00:29:44,180 --> 00:29:48,920 So it was following convention that the patron presented himself as the maker. 234 00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:52,700 Sushis portrayed paganism. 235 00:29:52,700 --> 00:30:02,320 But the new church was not the creation of some clever intellectual theory imposed by the patron, but of professional builders. 236 00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:10,550 And also, it was more experimental itself and inconsistent with itself than textbooks tend to send. 237 00:30:10,550 --> 00:30:14,170 There's another point about architectural history, architectural history. 238 00:30:14,170 --> 00:30:21,640 When you read it, you encounter buildings being described in art history books that you presented with a building. 239 00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:25,970 So, yes, certainly it is the first Gothic church. And these four features, it has an. 240 00:30:25,970 --> 00:30:30,490 Some already just the same thing, but actually shot through inconsistencies. 241 00:30:30,490 --> 00:30:35,740 Just as I said, Canterbury Monsignor William Basalts was. 242 00:30:35,740 --> 00:30:47,020 You have to cry, officer training for ill health. No, it's okay, but we can seem to joynes we can see we can see that the slight changes of. 243 00:30:47,020 --> 00:30:51,590 And this, again, might have a lesson for us, not just in terms of believability, 244 00:30:51,590 --> 00:30:59,690 art, art and its production generally and often, as with the bishop of accessor. 245 00:30:59,690 --> 00:31:04,700 We just encountered a patron was spurred on by the sense that other people will put the effects of the buildings. 246 00:31:04,700 --> 00:31:11,710 And they wanted the prestige to compete. 247 00:31:11,710 --> 00:31:18,170 Just to take an example, from the end of the mediaeval period, beginning of the 16th century. 248 00:31:18,170 --> 00:31:30,530 Bishop Oliver Bath and Wells. Both places joined together, he said, anyway, he had a dream. 249 00:31:30,530 --> 00:31:35,000 So this is, of course, another way of justifying it. 250 00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:43,890 And so that's my dream. I would like the Priory Church and the very Asian private church of the bath to be razed to the ground. 251 00:31:43,890 --> 00:31:51,520 And we're gonna put up something really wonderful that I've seen in my life, my dream in its place. 252 00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:53,790 And that was the justification that was that was given. 253 00:31:53,790 --> 00:32:02,190 He hired the Masons who whose names we know and we know something about them who were called Virtue Roberson, 254 00:32:02,190 --> 00:32:08,430 William Virtue, the older brother of the two. 255 00:32:08,430 --> 00:32:18,360 Robert had previously worked with his father on the Kings works on the on the Royal The World Chapel, most prestigious building in the country. 256 00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:22,730 And later, the latest, which was the east end of Westminster Abbey. 257 00:32:22,730 --> 00:32:29,810 The the Henry the sentence. What became the Henry the sentence chapel. And actually, I'm just here the next night. 258 00:32:29,810 --> 00:32:39,430 So on the right hand side of the screen, you see what Adam Virtue and Robert Virtue had produced for the Royal Easter and the 259 00:32:39,430 --> 00:32:45,820 new royal east end of Westminster Abbey in the last years of the of the 15th century. 260 00:32:45,820 --> 00:32:49,810 This, to the like of this has never been seen, not quite quite like this. 261 00:32:49,810 --> 00:32:58,300 There are once again experiments with this kind of patterned what's countrypeople fan vaulting. 262 00:32:58,300 --> 00:33:00,620 So that, again, this doesn't come from nowhere. 263 00:33:00,620 --> 00:33:10,240 But the Masons clearly push the base out of whatever it tried to do for the royal patrons in this instance. 264 00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:19,120 And to those that Klaus in particular are calling, please, of any secular ecclesiastical peers of the realm of bishops, 265 00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:23,230 we should all over Boston must have been there all talking about this. 266 00:33:23,230 --> 00:33:31,480 And so the bishop of Bath in Wales in this instance of 52 gets hold of Robert Virtue's has come down to my place. 267 00:33:31,480 --> 00:33:36,700 I just had a vision of having you. We'll have a new building and on a smaller scale. 268 00:33:36,700 --> 00:33:45,430 And in fact, in a context where different models are used for the rebuilding, the old, low, dark, 269 00:33:45,430 --> 00:33:51,130 thick walled and narrow windowed Romanesque priory Church of Bath was razed to 270 00:33:51,130 --> 00:33:57,310 the ground and it was replaced by the high high Arcadia's high clear street. 271 00:33:57,310 --> 00:33:58,420 No gallery in between. 272 00:33:58,420 --> 00:34:04,630 So the history is enormous with these enormous windows, these features of these lateral features of the building you're looking at, 273 00:34:04,630 --> 00:34:13,300 which is both Abbey to this day are modelled on the parish church in Somerset in this very. 274 00:34:13,300 --> 00:34:18,400 But the ceiling where he got in, which he did, which the virtues, 275 00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:26,020 the brothers virtue were also in what is a simplified version of what had been just put up in Westminster Abbey. 276 00:34:26,020 --> 00:34:31,690 And we can see the mentality behind the patrons choice here in this letter, 277 00:34:31,690 --> 00:34:38,320 which I quoted for you, in which he says to one of the secular ministers of the King, Robertson, 278 00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:42,960 William Virtues have been here with me that can report on the state and forwardness of this church, 279 00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:47,800 a bath and of the vaults devised for the chancellor of the centre church, 280 00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:54,470 where unto as they say now, there shall be none so goodly, neither in England nor in France. 281 00:34:54,470 --> 00:34:57,240 So in cases like this, about Susur and Bishop Oliver, 282 00:34:57,240 --> 00:35:03,240 we can see the ambition and the taste of the patron and a clear bearing on the direction of the building operation. 283 00:35:03,240 --> 00:35:08,040 But the practical business of making the structure lay firmly with. 284 00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:17,680 The crafts people trust people learn how to do these things in the Mason's yard, constantly experimenting, perhaps trying out some new ideas. 285 00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:26,500 But that's where the practical learning is concentrated. 286 00:35:26,500 --> 00:35:35,830 I've mentioned this tendency of artistry to deal with complete objects and complete buildings and that this is misleading. 287 00:35:35,830 --> 00:35:42,160 There's always been a tendency for building projects to remain incomplete, 288 00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:48,940 to say academic art histories tended to privilege the appreciation of whole buildings over fragments. 289 00:35:48,940 --> 00:35:54,730 But the reality is that only a minority of structures consent to it can be said to be in time. 290 00:35:54,730 --> 00:36:01,870 With respect to a single design, even apart, and I'm not talking about this today that I mentioned at the beginning, 291 00:36:01,870 --> 00:36:05,220 the separation of architectural history from other kinds of history will. 292 00:36:05,220 --> 00:36:12,160 One massive result of that is that studies of great churches, for example, 293 00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:17,080 tend to be carried out by architectural historians who look at the architecture. 294 00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:23,540 The functioning of those buildings depended on the furnishings, upon hangings, upon altars and altar pieces, 295 00:36:23,540 --> 00:36:29,660 on civility, surgical equipment, all of which were made by a whole host of diversity, 296 00:36:29,660 --> 00:36:37,250 different crafts people, and were in the practical use as much as the architecture, 297 00:36:37,250 --> 00:36:45,720 catalysts of response, understanding, creation of meaning in the early. 298 00:36:45,720 --> 00:36:59,510 But if we stick only with the architecture, as I say, we need to take it, we need to hoist in the non completion of many, if not most buildings. 299 00:36:59,510 --> 00:37:05,710 But not only that, it's actually interesting. It can be illuminating to look at the reasons why buildings aren't finished. 300 00:37:05,710 --> 00:37:11,820 According to a single Windsor piano, Renzo Piano kind of design, 301 00:37:11,820 --> 00:37:20,650 the many structural problems encountered on mediaeval sites draw attention to the way in which master masons tended to work empirically, 302 00:37:20,650 --> 00:37:22,900 pragmatically, lacking so much they showed. 303 00:37:22,900 --> 00:37:30,820 As I mentioned just now north of Paris, just after eleven hundred feeling their way towards solutions which were not always clear at the start. 304 00:37:30,820 --> 00:37:39,550 And we can see this very dramatically in this instance, the amazing space of BofI Choir. 305 00:37:39,550 --> 00:37:52,750 So this is this is one to see, another one with a great 13th century northern French cathedral buildings where the Masons just went on. 306 00:37:52,750 --> 00:37:57,610 And it's a very French thing, this competitive. You noticed it with the bishop of Auxerre. Well, people are going up. 307 00:37:57,610 --> 00:38:07,570 I want to go up to this Beauvais. This this pretty much touch the sky at forty six point eight metres from the main floor. 308 00:38:07,570 --> 00:38:19,820 But if you look at the furniture in the foreground, think these chairs, it gives you a bit of an idea of the distance to the ceiling. 309 00:38:19,820 --> 00:38:28,000 But here again, this is there's an element of the hazardous about the deliberately hazardous, consciously hazardous and experimental, 310 00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:35,000 and actually they got as far as the crossing, working from EastEnders has often is the case working from the East End as far as the crossing. 311 00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:39,520 And they are a couple of days into the night and then the cracks started opening up. 312 00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:44,080 And. They stopped them from the outside. 313 00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:50,110 What you see today is an old photograph. This is what you see today. You see this. 314 00:38:50,110 --> 00:38:54,550 So there it is. That's the that's the chance of the crossing and the beginning of the nave. 315 00:38:54,550 --> 00:39:01,970 And at that point, they realise that this was far, far, far too dangerous, great chunks, and makes me started falling off. 316 00:39:01,970 --> 00:39:07,870 And they called a halt. And you can see the seats of the height of the nave. 317 00:39:07,870 --> 00:39:13,120 After all, it was a little bit lower than that. They pulled back. 318 00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:16,870 I mean, the reasons, as I say, the reasons for Puscifer interruption are interesting. 319 00:39:16,870 --> 00:39:23,170 The reasons why the movie, if we if we look at it, we understand, is that we we need to a slightly different questions about the motives. 320 00:39:23,170 --> 00:39:34,420 But for embarking on this kind of project, because there is something undoubtedly heroic and hazardous about embarking project. 321 00:39:34,420 --> 00:39:41,680 The details of which are not understood. Clearly, they were understood from the beginning. 322 00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:46,060 Many designs evolved in the course of execution. Again, 323 00:39:46,060 --> 00:39:51,010 underlining the role of the unpredictable places when big themes this morning is coming 324 00:39:51,010 --> 00:39:57,160 across and the importance of an element of pragmatism on the part of the builders. 325 00:39:57,160 --> 00:40:07,660 Sometimes the appearance of alarming cracks generated extraordinary and brilliant, um, uh, solutions. 326 00:40:07,660 --> 00:40:17,260 So the 13th century Navon Crossing and Wells Cathedral in Somerset and in particular the enormous height and weight of 327 00:40:17,260 --> 00:40:26,290 the tower in the 14th century and the early 14th century began to create cracks in the lower parts around the crossing, 328 00:40:26,290 --> 00:40:28,840 the nave and then the crossing. 329 00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:38,890 So there was there was fear that the whole thing just splay out and then the control tower collapse and these reverse arches, 330 00:40:38,890 --> 00:40:44,230 scissor arches were invented, were invented, turned into a pragmatic invention in around 13, 331 00:40:44,230 --> 00:40:59,620 30 of brilliant architects turning near disaster to crater a new a new invention which has worked so far. 332 00:40:59,620 --> 00:41:08,870 On the other hand, at Ely Cathedral in the thirteen thirties, the central tower collapsed. 333 00:41:08,870 --> 00:41:20,470 It simply felt it collapsed on itself and. So that was of a catastrophe which had to be resolved in some way. 334 00:41:20,470 --> 00:41:25,000 And here we have again a Chronicle, the 14th century monastic chronicle of Ealey, 335 00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:28,900 which attributes the this is what we're looking at is the replacement, 336 00:41:28,900 --> 00:41:36,370 the amazing octagon of the cathedral, the the 14th century solution to that particular local disaster. 337 00:41:36,370 --> 00:41:39,500 And the chronicler attributes it to the sacristy. 338 00:41:39,500 --> 00:41:47,790 The monk who was responsible for the ornaments and maintenance of the church of the building, who was called Ellen Wolf thing. 339 00:41:47,790 --> 00:41:54,490 And once again, readers of this attended. No one will see him, a brilliant patron or somebody who has an idea. 340 00:41:54,490 --> 00:42:00,400 Maybe he's the clever person who thought, let's go for an eight sided towelettes. 341 00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:12,690 Let's include other novel features. But again, much more likely is it that the sacristy was seen at the time as taking responsibility for the Ripper, 342 00:42:12,690 --> 00:42:17,440 but that the required practical skill lay in other hands. And then it's it's it's a work of genius. 343 00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:25,690 This is the exterior anyway, to admire. And then from the inside, standing underneath this crossing tower and looking up. 344 00:42:25,690 --> 00:42:31,180 This is what you see. And it's. 345 00:42:31,180 --> 00:42:41,590 It's as though the designer is saying, well, we did have a massive square tower and it was very brand venerable and wonderful. 346 00:42:41,590 --> 00:42:50,850 But actually now we've got to haven't devolves to look up with these soaring clusters of. 347 00:42:50,850 --> 00:42:57,440 Of ribs surrounding an octagon, which itself, because it rises higher, 348 00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:02,600 is illuminated or a creates this said the sense of a heavenly heavenly spare above. 349 00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:09,860 So there's a theatre, a drama, a theological message to about that, which is brilliant, 350 00:43:09,860 --> 00:43:14,300 original and also breathtaking because I all in the other one just fall down. 351 00:43:14,300 --> 00:43:21,410 And doesn't this look like an even more complex and risky building? It looks like an achievement in stone. 352 00:43:21,410 --> 00:43:25,610 That would be completely impossible. And indeed, so it would have been completely impossible. 353 00:43:25,610 --> 00:43:29,480 It looks as if it's not in stone. It is entirely made of wood. 354 00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:43,910 So, again, ingenuity and brilliance and creativity can come out of that Mason's yard with the stimulus of certain challenges and particular patrons. 355 00:43:43,910 --> 00:43:50,150 And we need to think about the interaction of all these elements and not just formulaically about one 356 00:43:50,150 --> 00:44:01,560 rich or ambitious or well read patron coming up with an idea and having the artisans simply executing. 357 00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:10,170 There's another I think this is the final example of this kind of experimentation that I wanted to show you at CNN Cathedral, 358 00:44:10,170 --> 00:44:18,900 Sienna's built on a series of hills and on the top of one of which legend had it not been a temple of Diana. 359 00:44:18,900 --> 00:44:21,880 And this was the site of the early Christian church in Seattle. 360 00:44:21,880 --> 00:44:30,790 Met the mother church and where in the late 13th century, which is the period of greatest expansion of the Communist Party, 361 00:44:30,790 --> 00:44:38,190 the Republican government of the city on the basis of banking in particular on trade, was newly rich and powerful. 362 00:44:38,190 --> 00:44:44,370 And it was reconstructing its image, if you like, of the image of the city through great public works. 363 00:44:44,370 --> 00:44:50,530 And this was a great civic projects, not an. Narrative, ecclesiastical, perfect. 364 00:44:50,530 --> 00:44:54,080 It was one that was funded by and overseen by the senior year. 365 00:44:54,080 --> 00:45:06,070 That said, the civil rulers of the CND Republic. And they wanted and they replaced again an old dark and low Romanesque church of the 20th century. 366 00:45:06,070 --> 00:45:09,520 At the end of the 13th and into the 14th centuries. With what? 367 00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:20,100 The structure. You see him. Now, again, what happened just demonstrates, I suppose, what I've been saying more than once, 368 00:45:20,100 --> 00:45:30,000 which is that patrons can have the most visionary dreams and the most ambitious ideas and the most competitive propagandistic motives. 369 00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:36,180 But it's Masons who have to deal with the practicalities of getting buildings up. 370 00:45:36,180 --> 00:45:46,800 And it's they who realised what eventually to see. But but the interaction is always fascinating in this instance, 371 00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:55,320 the rebuilding of the Romanesque church in ways which means that we've been looking 372 00:45:55,320 --> 00:46:01,740 at in the northern French Gothic ideas of height and wide windows and so on, 373 00:46:01,740 --> 00:46:07,860 led to the extension of the church beyond its 20th century limit. 374 00:46:07,860 --> 00:46:13,980 Further east. That's what you're looking at today. To the left here. And as I think you can probably see, we're on one of the hills. 375 00:46:13,980 --> 00:46:17,640 The ground falls very steeply away here at the left hand end of the slide. 376 00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:25,080 And so the eastern end of the church was being jetted out over steeply falling hillside. 377 00:46:25,080 --> 00:46:29,160 And they hadn't got very far into the early. They started in the 80s. 378 00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:34,930 They hadn't got very far and very early 13 hundreds when the new Eastend simply started to fall down, 379 00:46:34,930 --> 00:46:39,950 pulled down the hill to get crack opened up and it started to lurch downhill slowly. 380 00:46:39,950 --> 00:46:46,800 Peoples crawling was being being yanked apart by gravity. 381 00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:53,100 Now you can imagine what what some of the Masons locally might have wanted to say about this. 382 00:46:53,100 --> 00:46:58,170 But the senior. And this does illustrate the continuing power of patronage. 383 00:46:58,170 --> 00:47:07,080 They called in masons from other cities to advice and from half a dozen other cities, particularly opiated cathedral had recently been completed. 384 00:47:07,080 --> 00:47:11,610 And they got these masons and we'll be able to have a look and give them and deliver their advice. 385 00:47:11,610 --> 00:47:15,450 And we have their advice on these six Masons say, guys, this is crazy. 386 00:47:15,450 --> 00:47:19,840 You are completely insane. You've got to stop. This is not safe. 387 00:47:19,840 --> 00:47:21,750 And only disaster will ensue. 388 00:47:21,750 --> 00:47:29,300 So the senior scenario took this and read the advice and then they said, right, OK, so we'll get to know that much bigger still. 389 00:47:29,300 --> 00:47:35,530 So, so far from taking this advice so far. So as I say, masons have to be listened to up to a point, 390 00:47:35,530 --> 00:47:45,270 but where the idea of the patron reaches beyond what you find on occasion, Masons in turn then given new tasks. 391 00:47:45,270 --> 00:47:55,770 And so what they decided to do was to curtail the plan to carry on building further east out here into the into the void, as it were. 392 00:47:55,770 --> 00:48:00,420 You can still see the cracks here and to reorientate the entire building so that what 393 00:48:00,420 --> 00:48:07,530 was the nave and the East End would become of me transacts of a newly configured vase. 394 00:48:07,530 --> 00:48:15,810 Biggest in Christendom. Cathedral with a nave on at right angles to this. 395 00:48:15,810 --> 00:48:26,040 So here on the right hand side, you see the planners of the church as it is now in and heart outline the stumpy stand frustratingly short. 396 00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:30,540 But reorientated according to the new plan, that would just have been the transept. 397 00:48:30,540 --> 00:48:39,060 And here in the lower part of the slide, you see the partially completed nave of what they say would have been a vaster and higher, 398 00:48:39,060 --> 00:48:44,430 wider and higher than any other interest in them, including churches in Rome at the day, at the day. 399 00:48:44,430 --> 00:48:57,620 And if you've been to see, you go to see if you can actually now walk up onto the parts of this new projected cathedral that were completed. 400 00:48:57,620 --> 00:49:03,210 It's a dizzying height up at the top here. And you see many, many miles out into the countryside. 401 00:49:03,210 --> 00:49:07,610 It's a very. And this photograph on the left was taken from under. So looking down. 402 00:49:07,610 --> 00:49:13,440 You seem to be exhausted. Amazing project. 403 00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:18,850 Maybe it's as well in this context. In the middle of Black Death, plague arrives thirty, forty eight. 404 00:49:18,850 --> 00:49:26,310 But that's not a subpopulation. Refunds meant that the whole project to be had to be given up. 405 00:49:26,310 --> 00:49:35,840 So I'm not saying patrons don't have any trouble. They certainly do. And it's in this tension and dialogue between patrons ambitions and. 406 00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:59,840 Mason's responses that we can see many of the most interesting, in some cases influential experiments of the period. 407 00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:08,660 So it's nice in the beginning, and we're not yet in the world of Renzo Piano or Richard Rodgers and that are Armani suits and social prestige, 408 00:50:08,660 --> 00:50:11,790 that separation from the general run of. 409 00:50:11,790 --> 00:50:20,610 But nonetheless, we can detect hints in just a few cases that individuals who wear the Maggie Street upper arm, 410 00:50:20,610 --> 00:50:30,400 the masters of the words, acquired a loftier respect than his manual labour that would otherwise come out. 411 00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:39,440 The master Mason is going to be living on the site at any at any time, but he has a long road, which is different from the closest thing. 412 00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:48,400 The other woman and he carries a staff, which means that he has the right to come on, not just the Masons who might be. 413 00:50:48,400 --> 00:50:52,790 A team within which he'd been trained originally, but also everybody else, 414 00:50:52,790 --> 00:51:00,260 you've got to you've got to collaborate with the Masons, the the carpenters, the places and so on. 415 00:51:00,260 --> 00:51:08,780 And we get hints of this respect for a limited number of masters of the works in images 416 00:51:08,780 --> 00:51:15,150 of designers in the floors of one or two of the cathedrals we've been talking about. 417 00:51:15,150 --> 00:51:25,150 Emil Rin's. Well, we have been talking about men particularly, but again, in northern France and here I'm sorry, one of those cases. 418 00:51:25,150 --> 00:51:31,410 Sorry. You can see the ropes and also perhaps you can just about make out the tools of the trade. 419 00:51:31,410 --> 00:51:32,800 The set square, 420 00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:48,610 the dividers that mark the Matthews's is used to measuring out dimensions and arcades and the profiles of stone mouldings and so forth. 421 00:51:48,610 --> 00:51:55,600 The earliest that unless the 13th century, also in the 13th century and significantly from Reames, 422 00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:59,890 again, northeast of Paris, is the earliest to monument. 423 00:51:59,890 --> 00:52:09,520 We have to a master Mason, and he too is the inscription around the edge, tells us his name and negotiate. 424 00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:18,130 He died in 36 and he's shown holding a building that's a model of Reims Cathedral. 425 00:52:18,130 --> 00:52:25,980 He's wearing that long note. And there are other emblems of his his profession, if you like. 426 00:52:25,980 --> 00:52:32,560 So there's certainly the certainly status here. 427 00:52:32,560 --> 00:52:36,790 These are always rather than obsolete. Obviously, if we've lost things. 428 00:52:36,790 --> 00:52:39,850 But these these are rabut. We do know there are some later mediaeval ones as well. 429 00:52:39,850 --> 00:52:48,600 Here's a German example at suit from the early 15th century where the designer of this church appears in his portrait 430 00:52:48,600 --> 00:52:57,430 in a three dimensional portrait with an inscription commemorating his his roles as the master master builder. 431 00:52:57,430 --> 00:53:03,430 The fact that the earliest one is at Reims is surely no accident because reads really got very high. 432 00:53:03,430 --> 00:53:13,790 Highly visible, high prestige building. The Coronation Church of the Capuchin Kings. 433 00:53:13,790 --> 00:53:22,590 Responsible, therefore, for creating in that cathedral the kind of image of Christian monarchy. 434 00:53:22,590 --> 00:53:26,960 Not just in the last few minutes. I wanted to. 435 00:53:26,960 --> 00:53:38,780 Just showed how, once again, patrons emulation of one another could drive new architectural developments. 436 00:53:38,780 --> 00:53:43,800 Because here still in Paris in the twelve 40s. 437 00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:53,940 So I said still in Paris, still in that Capucine zone of Paris, Reames, Sundanese in Paris itself, in the Tofel 30s and 40s. 438 00:53:53,940 --> 00:53:57,300 The king of France, then king of France, the then Capucine King Louis, 439 00:53:57,300 --> 00:54:03,280 the ninth who had acquired the most amazing collection of relics in all of Christendom. 440 00:54:03,280 --> 00:54:08,030 Polluting the crown of thorns from Christ's crucifixion and arrange these on the wild. 441 00:54:08,030 --> 00:54:14,780 He had built by his masons that glaziers this enormous, again, reliquary. 442 00:54:14,780 --> 00:54:17,120 So it's a it's smaller than Canterbury Cathedral, 443 00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:24,320 but it's conceived in the same way as it can large reliquary to house these extraordinary this extraordinary collection. 444 00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:30,940 And it was then a kind of an extension of his own image as a Christian, as a Christian community. 445 00:54:30,940 --> 00:54:37,580 But he was looking after these that Paris with under his aegis, a kind of new Jerusalem. 446 00:54:37,580 --> 00:54:45,170 And as you can see, how again brilliantly these new ideas of height and right are used in this instance, 447 00:54:45,170 --> 00:54:50,590 the sand Chapell, what was, as it still is, a sensation. 448 00:54:50,590 --> 00:55:01,310 And one of the people who are completely not sideways by it was the king of England who in twelve forty once Henry the third went on a visit to Paris. 449 00:55:01,310 --> 00:55:08,360 And when he came back, he could not stop talking about comparisons because this actually became the butt of jokes. 450 00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:17,000 We've even got vernacular songs from the time Ionising The King's obsession wanted to bring that Sam Chapelle back in a cart to London. 451 00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:21,490 This kind of thing he told his courtiers, they got they've got houses four stories high. 452 00:55:21,490 --> 00:55:28,150 And we were we've really got to be more like Paris and Gerry, the the the prestige the king of France have got in amongst them. 453 00:55:28,150 --> 00:55:32,630 He was determined to have something that could begin to compete. 454 00:55:32,630 --> 00:55:46,370 And lo and behold, he he hired Henry of Reeds, significantly named Master Masons, master of the works for a new rebuilding of Westminster Abbey. 455 00:55:46,370 --> 00:55:54,760 And on the. Left. 456 00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:58,630 I'm showing you the north transept of Reims Cathedral. 457 00:55:58,630 --> 00:56:00,790 And on the right, I'm showing you. 458 00:56:00,790 --> 00:56:11,290 It's been slightly modified since I'm showing you the north transept of Westminster Abbey, where you see the recently completed Cathedral of Reims. 459 00:56:11,290 --> 00:56:20,160 As I say, the Coronation Church of the Capuchins becomes through the English Kings patronage of a master of works from Reeds, 460 00:56:20,160 --> 00:56:25,150 half a model, not a reprint in every detail, 461 00:56:25,150 --> 00:56:30,790 but an inspiration for the new building of Westminster Abbey with its rose window 462 00:56:30,790 --> 00:56:35,830 and its triple portico for the King to process in two services and so on. 463 00:56:35,830 --> 00:56:49,680 Next to the Royal Palace of Westminster, it becomes. And the was a very recently being worked out reams around twelve thirty by glaziers, 464 00:56:49,680 --> 00:56:57,900 and Mason's working now with increasingly risky, thin numbers in stone to create quite delicate. 465 00:56:57,900 --> 00:57:07,890 Beginning to create quite delicate filigree effects in the windows, something which initially back in sushis dense underneath you don't yet see. 466 00:57:07,890 --> 00:57:13,260 But here you're beginning to see new experiments. And then this is emulated and taken further. 467 00:57:13,260 --> 00:57:22,350 Westminster Abbey here in the chapter, a house that was finished in twelve fifty three. 468 00:57:22,350 --> 00:57:34,410 And in turn, the chapter house of 53, which is is that this is conceived as a it's a polygon hexagon around a central, 469 00:57:34,410 --> 00:57:46,020 wonderfully thin, treelike pier at the centre of this cluster of little piers, in fact, that sprang out and support the roof. 470 00:57:46,020 --> 00:57:51,000 And then the wind, the enormously wide windows, as you see. 471 00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:57,420 And then this is emulated in the 12th 60s at Salisbury, where you can see various details cropping up, 472 00:57:57,420 --> 00:58:03,870 where the visual so every member of the king's court is taking taking this idea, this idea wrong. 473 00:58:03,870 --> 00:58:06,980 Not everybody thought that what Henry was doing was the right thing. 474 00:58:06,980 --> 00:58:12,960 It was a politics about copying France, which Barens and others in even contested. 475 00:58:12,960 --> 00:58:17,940 In fact, some of the secular barons gathered in Oxford precisely to complain that he was going to French, 476 00:58:17,940 --> 00:58:30,990 that this was too much in hock to French culture, French influence, and not all bishops went the way of the bishop of Solsbury in that instance. 477 00:58:30,990 --> 00:58:42,510 But anyway, what we see in these cases is a dynamic which is, I think, interesting interaction between ideas and inspirations on the part of patrons, 478 00:58:42,510 --> 00:58:52,650 practical techniques, willingness to experiment, sometimes brilliant, pragmatic solutions on the part of craftspeople. 479 00:58:52,650 --> 00:58:59,280 And so finally, I'm sorry I've ever run slightly, but district, just finally, there are three points against comes three points. 480 00:58:59,280 --> 00:59:04,560 Let's stand out from this review of mediaeval building practise first, 481 00:59:04,560 --> 00:59:11,570 the respect for architecture as a liberal art is a distinctively Western and recent phenomenon, 482 00:59:11,570 --> 00:59:19,850 professionalisation, which sets the modern architect apart from mechanical builders and technicians dating from the 19th century. 483 00:59:19,850 --> 00:59:28,040 Second, the role of a patron in this period and also in this, as in other media. 484 00:59:28,040 --> 00:59:33,020 Needs to be carefully weighed. On the one hand, not only patients money, but also the patrons personal, 485 00:59:33,020 --> 00:59:42,510 political or religious or put their agenda presented as a dream or Christian kingship or whatever. 486 00:59:42,510 --> 00:59:48,920 But these ideas, clearly these affect significantly the choice of materials, the forms, the workmen employed. 487 00:59:48,920 --> 00:59:56,510 But we shouldn't confuse the ambitions of a patron for the ability to design a building. 488 00:59:56,510 --> 01:00:08,910 And the third and final point is the significance in architecture and in architectural history of the experimental, pragmatic, the incomplete design. 489 01:00:08,910 --> 01:00:15,090 Does it say architectural history is always privileged? The apparently complete building. 490 01:00:15,090 --> 01:00:23,360 But on this point, the mediaeval evidence isn't alone in suggesting that reality tended to be more unpredictable. 491 01:00:23,360 --> 01:00:26,380 Some say the general point here, and this is my end, 492 01:00:26,380 --> 01:00:38,218 is that the subject matter of art history that we might wish it otherwise is always, in some sense, incomplete.