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In Search of the Byzantine: George Gilbert Scott’s Diary of an Architectural Tour in France in 1862

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Gavin Stamp
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‘When you go abroad, begin with France’, George Gilbert Scott told his student audience at the Royal Academy. ‘It is the great centre of Mediaeval art.’ Scott himself was late in appreciating this. Apart from a day trip to Calais at the beginning of his career, the first visit he paid to France was in 1847, soon after securing his first cathedral appointment at Ely when he was 36 years old. ‘My eyes were at once opened,’ he later recalled:

What I had always conceived to be German architecture I now found to be French. I thoroughly studied the details of Amiens, and those of the Sainte Chapelle, which bore most closely on my previous German studies, and I returned home with a wholly new set of ideas, and with many of my old ones dispelled. It seems curious that I should have been twelve years in practice, before I became acquainted with French architecture, yet I was first among English architects, as I believe, to study it in detail in any practical way, and with a practical intention.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 46 , 2003 , pp. 189 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2003

References

Notes

1 SirScott, Gilbert, Lectures on the Rise and Development of Mediæval Architecture delivered at the Royal Academy, 2 vols (London, 1879), p. 33 Google Scholar (Lecture I: 1857).

2 Personal and Professional Recollections by the late Sir George Gilbert Scott, R.A., ed. Scott, G. Gilbert (London, 1879 Google Scholar; new edition ed. Gavin Stamp, Stamford, 1995), pp. 146-47.

3 Scott, Recollections, p. 212.

4 A letter from John Oldrid Scott to Irvine, 17 October 1886, records the gift of these notebooks to his father’s devoted assistant. Correspondence among Irvine’s papers now at the RCAHMS [MS28/398] records that J. O. Scott had destroyed most of his father’s drawings, sketches and personal letters. A letter to Irvine, 3 March 1880 from Scott’s former assistant, Charles R. Baker King, who was retained in the Spring Gardens office, states that ‘I am now going through all the old papers — with a view to the destruction of what are useless;’ a letter from J. O. Scott to Irvine, 22 April 1880, claiming that ‘The detail drawings … had vanished before your appeal came. The quantity was so enormous that it was quite necessary to thin them down’, is annotated, ‘Pulping of Sir G.G. Scott’s general drawings!!’ A note by Irvine dated 13 June 1882 states: ‘Mr John Oldrid Scott who told me on the Road that he had lately destroyed his father’s letters to his mother before they were married & hers to him. He also said that the destruction of the old drawings up at the office they had destroyed great quantities of Sir Gilbt Scott’s sketches the ideas for the smaller churches.’ For the fate of Scott’s practice, also see Stamp, Gavin, An Architect of Promise: George Gilbert Scott junior, 1819-1897, and the Late Gothic Revival (Donington, 2002)Google Scholar.

5 The Academy (29 March 1879), p. 288.

6 Crook, J. Mordaunt, ‘Benjamin Webb (1819-85) and Victorian Ecclesiology’, in Studies in Church History, 33 (1997), p. 438 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoting The Ecclesiologist, 20 (1859).

7 Summerson, John, Heavenly Mansions (London, 1949), p. 172 Google Scholar; the article was first published in the ‘Gothic Number’ of The Architectural Review in December 1945, pp. 166-74.

8 See Denslagen, Wim, Architectural restoration in Western Europe: controversy and continuity (Amsterdam, 1994), p. 84frGoogle Scholar.; Leniaud, Jean-Michel, Les cathédrales au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1993), pp. 328-36Google Scholar; and Leniaud, Jean-Michel, Viollet-le-Duc ou les délires du système (Paris, 1994), pp. 96–100 Google Scholar. In August 1874, the Architectural Association tour of France visited Evreux, finding that, as The Builder, 32 (5 September 1874), p. 741, recorded, ‘the nave is, with the exception of three bays, divided off from the rest of the church, and is being actively dealt with under the guidance of one of the Government architects. Two of the flying buttresses on the north have been pitched in pieces on the ground, and as some cracks have shown themselves in the filling in of the vault it is proposed to renew the whole. These works are not regarded with favour apparently by the townspeople and local antiquaries at Evreux, who appear to lean to the preservation, if at all possible, of the old work unaltered. One of the local anti-destruction party took occasion to mention that M. Delamotte, chef de division des travaux au Ministère des Cultes, deserved a place in the pillory of history for destroying (as he put it) St. Front at Perigueux, the cathedral at Angoulême, &c, and for finishing up a long career by menacing the well-reverenced cathedral of Evreux.’

9 Notebook no. 6, of c. 1878 at the RIBA (ScGGJ[7]6).

10 For a catalogue of this destruction, see Réau, Louis, Histoire du Vandalisme. Les Monuments détruits de l’art Français, 2 vols (Paris, 1959)Google Scholar.

11 Martin Meade points out to me that after the Concordat of 1801 such altars as survived were retained as symbols of continuity as well as being regarded as part of the national heritage, and that, under the Second Empire, the Empress’s fixation with Queen Marie-Antoinette encouraged their retention while the Administration des Cultes discouraged the clergy from altering furnishings without permission.

12 See Leniaud, Viollet-le-Duc, pp. 30-34; Leniaud, Jean-Michel, Les archipels du passé: Le patrimoine et son histoire (Paris, 2002), pp. 142-51Google Scholar.

13 Merimée and Viollet-le-Duc drafted the code of practice issued to the Architectes Diocésains by Ministère des Cultes in 1849, entitled Édifices diocésains: Instruction pour la conversion, l’entretien et la restauration de ces édifices et particulièrement les cathédrales: see Leniaud, Cathédrales, pp. 810-26.

14 Bergdoll, Barry, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, The Foundations of Architecture. Selections from the Dictionnaire raisonné (New York, 1990), pp. 17–22 Google Scholar. I am particularly grateful to Charlotte Ellis for taking me through the complexities of French restoration policies and organisations.

15 Leniaud, Les archipels, pp. 143 and 149.

16 Kevin D. Murphy, , Memory and Modernity. Viollet-le-Duc at Vézelay (State College, Pennsylvania, 2000)Google Scholar; Leniaud, Cathédrales.

17 The Ecclesiologist, 18 (December 1857), pp. 342-45, quoted by Miele, Chris, ‘Re-Presenting the Church Militant: the Camden Society, Church Restoration, and the Gothic Sign’, in ‘The Church as it should be’: The Cambridge Camden Society and its Influence, ed. Webster, Christopher & Elliott, John (Stamford, 2000)Google Scholar.

18 The Ecclesiologist,s 22 (April 1861), p. 70, quoted in Middleton, R. D., ‘Viollet-le-Duc’s influence in Nineteenth-Century England’, Art History, 4, no. 2 (June 1981), p. 207 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Viollet-le-Duc, E.-E., Dictionaire Raisonné de l’Architecture Français du XIe au XVIe Siècle, 10 vols, VIII (Paris, 1866), p. 26 Google Scholar: English translation from Wethered, Charles, On Restoration by E. Viollet-le-Duc (London, 1875), p. 46 Google Scholar.

20 Ruskin, John, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London, 1849), p. 179 Google Scholar.

21 Letter to Arcisse de Caumont, 2 July 1834, quoted in Réau, , Vandalisme, 11, p. 106 Google Scholar; four days later he wrote to Adolphe Thiers that ‘Le mauvais gout qui a preside à la plupart des réparations faites à nos monuments du Moyen Age a laissé des traces peut-être plus funestes que les devastations, suites de nos guerres civiles et de la Révolution. Les protestants et les terroristes se sont contentés de mutiler des statues tandis que trop souvent les reparations ont complètement changé l’aspect des édifices que nos architectes ont voulu restaurer’. Marcel Proust would snobbishly observe in his Remembrance of Things Past: Cities of the Plain, part 2,1922 (translated by Moncrieff, C. K. Scott & Kilmartin, Terence, 2 (Harmondsworth, 1983), p. 911)Google Scholar that it was the socially inauthentic who ‘have perhaps had their imaginations more beguiled by feudal dreams than the men who really have lived among princes, just as, for the small shopkeeper who sometimes goes on a Sunday to look at buildings of the “olden days,” it is often those of which every stone is of our own, the vaults of which have been painted blue and sprinkled with golden stars by pupils of Viollet-le-Duc, that provide the most potent sensation of the Middle Ages’. I am grateful to Dr Anthony Geraghty for this reference.

22 Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1st series, 22 (1862), pp. 79-81; the text was later published as a pamphlet by J. H. Parker (Oxford & London, 1864).

23 Viollet-le-Duc, , Dictionnaire Raisonné, VIII (Paris, 1866), p. 14 Google Scholar: ‘Le mot et la chose sont modernes. Restaurer un édifice, ce n’est pas l’entretenir, le réparer ou le refaire, c’est le rétablir dans un état complet qui peut n’avoir jamais existé à un moment donné.’ English translation from Charles Wethered, On Restoration, p. 9.

24 Middleton, ‘Viollet-le-Duc’, p. 206.

25 RA Lecture III (1858); Scott, , Lectures, 1, p. 98 Google Scholar. Scott presumably did not appreciate that the Dictionnaire he so admired was, in part, responsible for the restorations he deplored.

26 RA Lecture VIII (1866); Scott, , Lectures, 1, p. 319 Google Scholar.

27 In two volumes: see note 1 above.

28 Scott, Recollections, p. 175; the first RA Lecture was delivered on 16 March 1857.

29 Scott, , Lectures, 1, p. 95 Google Scholar, and see note 96 below. In Recollections, p. 330, Scott recorded that in 1873 he made a six-month long tour of Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France, partly with two of his sons and partly with J. H. Parker, and the following year visited Normandy and Germany with two of his sons. For Scott’s knowledge of Normandy and of Norrey church in particular, see Stamp, Gavin, ‘Le Revival Gothique Haut Victorien et l’Architecture Normande’, in L’Architecture Normande en Europe: Identités et Echanges du XIe siècle à nos jours, ed. Meade, M. K., Szambien, W. & Talenti, S. (Marseilles, 2002), pp. 123-40Google Scholar, an expanded version of which is published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 62, no. 2 (June 2003), pp. 194-211.

30 Irvine to Dr Joseph Anderson, July 1887, among the correspondence at the RCAHMS (MS28/398): ‘I have sent off 15 notebooks which belonged to the late Sir G.G. Scott for presentation to the Library of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. If they will do me the favour to receive them for that purpose. In their library they will be free from the chances of Destruction that surround objects of interest when left in private keeping. Another will follow so soon as I can manage to transcribe from it notes of some Continental churches he visited during a holyday visit to France.’

31 Scott, Recollections, p. 177.

32 [Murray’s] Hand-book for Travellers in France (London, 1861) — the 8th edition which was the one Scott presumably used on his tour — p. xviii; Scott referred to Murray’s Hand-book twice in his diary, when at Nevers and at Vézelay.

33 [Murray’s] Hand-book for Travellers in France, 11th edition (London, 1870), p. xx.

34 Murray, , France (1861), p. xviii Google Scholar.

35 The Petit, Revd J. L., Architectural Studies in France (London, 1854), p. 101 Google Scholar.

36 For example, about Cormery and Loches churches.

37 Parker, J. H., An Architectural Tour in the English Provinces of France, published in parts: Notes of a Tour in the West of France (London, 1852)Google Scholar, Observations on the Ancient Churches of the West of France (London, 1853), Further Observations on the Ancient Churches of the West of France (London, 1854) and Mediæval Architecture in Aquitaine (London, 1855 & 1856), and also in Archeologia, xxxiv (1852), xxxv (1853) & xxxvi (1854). Middleton, ‘Viollet-le-Duc’, p. 206, records that Viollet-le-Duc gave Parker advice about this tour.

38 Scott, Recollections, p. 279; Survey of London, 38, The Museums Area of South Kensington and Westminster, ed. Shepherd, F. (London, 1975), p. 179 Google Scholar.

39 Scott, Recollections, p. 279. Donaldson’s lecture was reported in The Builder, 11 (29 January 1853), p. 66, and Scott had commented afterwards on the resemblance of Norman churches with ‘Greek character’, like that at Kilpeck, to the French examples.

40 Petit frequently referred to the book by de Verneilh mentioned later in this paragraph as well as to many other French publications such as that by Mallay: see note 72 below; Parker, in his Observations on the Ancient Churches of the West of France (see note 37 above), also referred approvingly to de Verneilh’s book.

41 Judi Loach points out to me that this nineteenth-century interest in the Byzantine can be seen in the context of the earlier seventeenth- and eighteenth-century debate about the virtues of primitivism in architecture and the associated interest in Early Christian basilicas; see Loach, Judi, ‘Anglicanism in London, Gallicism in Paris, Primitivism in both’, in Plus ça change: Architectural Interchange between France & Britain, ed. Jackson, Neil (Nottingham, 2000), pp. 9–32 Google Scholar.

42 For this controversy, the interest in Byzantine architecture and much else, see Bergdoll, Barry, Léon Vaudoyer. Historicism in the Age of Industry (New York, Cambridge & London, 1994), especially pp. 200-06Google Scholar and 237-39. Vaudoyer, who as one of the three Inspecteurs Généraux des Edifices Diocésains appointed in 1853 (along with Viollet-le-Duc and Léonce Reynaud) supported Abadie’s proposal, designed the new cathedral at Marseilles in 1852-57 in an eclectic Romano-Byzantine manner.

43 See note 47 below.

44 Scott never built an entirely new church in the Romanesque-Byzantine manner, although his second son John Oldrid Scott designed the round-arched and domed Greek Orthodox church in Bayswater, London (1874-82). Interestingly, creative use of the plan and vaulting arrangement at St Front was made by his grandson, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, in his remarkable St Paul’s Stoneycroft, Liverpool, of 1913-16.

45 Murray, France (1861), recorded that, if Scott travelled by rail to Folkestone, crossed by steam ferry to Boulogne and took an express train to Paris via Abbeville and Amiens, the journey could have taken about 10 5 hours. Scott’s sketchbook dated 1862 at the RIBA (ScGGS[5]27) includes Les Halles and the Hôpital de Lariboissière in Paris, but these sketches could have been drawn on another occasion or copied from elsewhere: see Fisher, G., Stamp, G., &c, Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The Scott Family, ed. Heseltine, J. (Amersham, 1981), p. 81 Google Scholar.

46 Scott’s architect sons George Gilbert Scott Junior (1839-97) and John Oldrid Scott (1841-1913), and his then chief assistant Richard Coad (1825-1900). A surviving letter from Scott Junior to J. T. Irvine now at the RCAHMS reveals that on 10 September 1862 he had been at Rouen, a city he frequented, especially after his mental breakdown in 1883: see Stamp, An Architect of Promise.

47 Scott had explored this theme in his RA Lecture III (1858); Scott, , Lectures, 1, p. 80ffGoogle Scholar.

48 Scott presumably travelled alone from here having parted from his two sons and Richard Coad. The Brittany line of the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest from the Paris terminus at Montparnasse through Chartres to Le Mans had been open since 1854.

49 Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus (1807-57) had been in charge of the restoration work at both Chartres and Le Mans cathedrals since 1848; following his death in 1857, he was succeeded by Emile Boeswillwald. Murray, , France (1861), noted (p. 117)Google Scholar that at the cathedral of St Julien ‘The chapels around the choir have been lately restored (1858) and the Lady Chapel scraped clear of whitewash, and clear remains of polychromatic decoration discovered’.

50 Petit, Architectural Studies, pp. 81-84.

51 Petit, Architectural Studies, pp. 26-38.

52 The church at Loches (Indre et Loire) had been restored by Aymar Verdier (1819-80), a pupil of Labrouste, who worked for the Monuments Historiques 1848-76 and was also diocesan architect for Amiens and Beauvais: see Les concours des monuments historiques de 1839 à 1979, exhibition catalogue, Caisse nationale des Monuments historiques et des Sites (Paris, 1981); I am most grateful to Charlotte Ellis for discovering this. Murray, , France (1861), noted (p. 197)Google Scholar, ‘Ch. Of St. Ours, a very interesting monument of ecclesiastical architecture, meriting in a high degree the attention of every student of Gothic architecture’. Viollet-le-Duc agreed, illustrating the bell-tower (in (1858), p. 320) and dome (IV (1859), p. 366) in his Dictionaire Raisonné, and observing (p. 364): ‘S’il est un édifice qui mérite toute la sollicitude de l’administration, c’est l’église de Loches; c’est un monument unique au monde, complet et d’une sauvage beauté. Il est à souhaiter que les travaux de restoration entrepris dans cet édifice lui rendent bientôt son aspect primitif.’ Also (p. 367): ‘Si ce curieux édifice se trouvait en Italie, en Angleterre ou en Allemagne, il serait connu, étudié, vanté et considéré comme présentant une des conceptions les plus extraordinaires de l’art roman. Malheureusement pour lui, il est en France, à quelques kilomètres des bords de la Loire; peu d’architectes l’ont visité, bien que la construction de ce monument est exécuté avec soin, que la sculpture et les profils sont du plus beau style.’

53 The west portal was recorded by Gustave Le Gray in 1851 as part of the photographic survey instigated by the Commission des Monuments historiques; the results are reproduced in Anne de Mondenard, , La Mission héliographique. Cinq photographes parcourent la France en 1851 (Paris, 2002), p. 249 Google Scholar.

54 Murray, France (1861), noted (p. 197)Google Scholar: ‘In the suburb Beaulieu, 1 m. E. of Loches, is a ruined Church, with a fine Romanesque tower … The Ch. of St. Laurent will interest the architect.’ The 1870 edition (p. 209) further noted that the church was ‘formerly attached to a Benedictine convent destroyed by the English, 1412’.

55 Properly Ste Maure (Indre et Loire) on the main line of the Chemin de Fer d’Orleans to Bordeaux: the section from Tours to Poitiers had opened in 1851 and on to Angoulême two years later. Scott had to travel from Tours to Loches by road.

56 Murray, , France (1861), noted (p. 218)Google Scholar: ‘The building called the Temple de St. Jean, originally a baptistry, then a church, lately a Musée, restored 1860, is, next to the Roman Circus, the oldest edifice in Poitiers, and one of the oldest Christian monuments in France.’ It was threatened with demolition by the municipality for a road improvement but, thanks to the protests of Prosper Mérimée and archaeologists, it was bought by the state in 1834 and became the first acquisition of the Monuments historiques: see Réau, , Vandalisme, III (1959), pp. 95 Google Scholar and 129, who noted that, despite strong protests, the Roman amphitheatre was destroyed in 1857 to make way for a covered market. These early churches in Poitiers were discussed in Petit, Architectural Studies, pp. 102-05.

57 The west front was photographed by Gustave Le Gray in 1851 when external works were in progress: see de Mondenard, La Mission héliographique, p. 252. Parker had visited Poitiers and written that ‘Notre Dame le Grand is celebrated for its west front, which is one of the richest pieces of Norman work in existence, being entirely covered with sculpture’ ( Parker, , Tour (1852), p. 14 Google Scholar). It is perhaps surprising that Scott did not comment on the remarkable interior scheme of painted decoration in the nave by Charles Joly-Leterme (restored in the 1980s). Réau, , Vandalisme, III, p. 95 Google Scholar, noted that ‘les murs et les piliers des nefs furent sauvagement peinturlurés en 1851’. Leniaud, Cathedrals, quotes F. L. Reynaud, one of the general inspectors, on the architect Joly-Leterme in 1853: ‘J’ai vu à Poitiers des restaurations exécutées par lui dont les résultats sont loin d’être heureux et qui donneraient une bien médiocre opinion du mérite des décorateurs du XIIe siècle.’ According to Réau, , Vandalisme, 11, p. 86 Google Scholar, the thirteenth-century cloister at Notre-Dame-la-Grande had been demolished in 1860 to make way for another covered market.

58 The cathedral of St Pierre is to be distinguished from the church of Notre-Dame-la-Grande. Murray, , France (1861), noted (p. 217)Google Scholar, ‘The cathedral is of a more severe style, but sadly defaced by modern painting’, which was presumably a reference to the monochrome interior overpainting of the surviving Medieval decoration after 1783: see Blomme, Yves, Poitiers: La cathédrale Saint-Pierre (Paris, 2001)Google Scholar. Incompetent work to the fabric carried out by departmental architects ceased following a visit by J.-B. Lassus (see below) in 1842; the restoration of the west front was begun in 1852 by J. C. J. de Mérindol (1815-88), who had been diocesan architect for Poitiers since 1848.

59 This was possibly the tower of Saint-Porchaire, which Mérimée had saved from demolition for a new road alignment in 1843 (see Réau, , Vandalisme, 11, pp. 95 Google Scholar and 129) and which was photographed in 1851: see de Mondenard, La Mission héliographique, p. 253.

60 The huge chimneypiece in the Palais des comtes de Poitiers was illustrated in plan and elevation in Viollet-le-Duc’s, Dictionaire Raisonné, III (Paris, 1858), pp. 205-06Google Scholar. The chevet of the palace was photographed by Le Gray in 1851: see de Mondenard, La Mission héliographique, p. 252.

61 The church was being restored by Paul Abadie (1812-84), who — with the support or the bishop, A.-E. Cousseau — completely rebuilt the bell tower, altered and heightened the west front and eliminated anything Gothic or Renaissance in style from the nave: see Laroche, Claude, ‘Le rêve et son interprétation: Saint-Pierre d’Angoulême’, in Paul Abadie, architecte, 1812-1884, exhibition catalogue (Paris, 1988), pp. 93–103 Google Scholar; and >Leniaud, Cathédrales, pp. 317-18. Murray, , France (1861), noted (p. 222)Google Scholar: ‘The Cathedral is rather a curious than a beautiful edifice, in the Romanesque style, rebuilt from its foundations in 1120. It suffered at the Revolution; and till very lately bore over its frontispiece the ill-effaced inscription, “Temple de la Raison”. It has been restored.’ Also see Petit, Architectural Studies, pp. 74-76; Baum, Julius, Romanesque Architecture in France (London, 1928), p. X Google Scholar &c. Scott cited Angoulême in his RA Lecture XVII (1873) on domes; Scott, , Lectures, 11, p. 274 Google Scholar. Parker, (Tour (1853), p. 12 Google Scholar) had visited the cathedral and published a plate of the interior.

62 The unrestored west front was photographed in 1851 by Le Gray: see de Mondenard, La Mission héliographique, p. 66; photographs and drawings of the cathedral before and after the restoration are illustrated in Laroche, Abadie. Scott would seem to have admired the west front shortly before Abadie set about altering it, adding towers and a gable and getting Michel Pascal to replace some of the sculpture in 1864. The Architectural Association visited the cathedral on its second tour of France in 1875 and was very critical of current French restoration practice; as the report in The Builder, 33 (4 September 1875), p. 790, noted: ‘The time is very opportune, because many of the buildings to be visited are as yet untouched by the levelling hand of the French restorer. He is on the road, however, and has begun in bad earnest at Angoulême cathedral, of which a large part has been pulled down, not from structural necessity, but to show how cleverly it can be built up again.’

63 The church was very probably St Martiel (1849-56) but possibly St Ausonne (1856-68), both of which were designed by Paul Abadie, as was the Hôtel de Ville (1858-68, incorporating towers from the old castle): for all three buildings see Laroche et al. in Abadie, pp. 171-73 and 286-03. Abadie was the son of the eponymous architect to the city of Angoulême (1783-1868). Abadie fils became diocesan architect for Angoulême, Périgueux and Cahors in 1849, and he would conduct the ruthless restorations of St Pierre at Angoulême (1850-82) and of St Front at Périgueux (1852-84: see below). He put the knowledge he acquired of the Romanesque to conspicuous effect in his design for his best known new work, the expiatory church of the Sacré-Cœur at Montmartre, Paris (1874-1919). Bus, C. du, the author of the article on Abadie in the Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, I (Paris, 1933)Google Scholar observed that ‘On peut l’accuser d’avoir trop bien suivi les leçons de Viollet-le-Duc.’

64 The church was being restored by Paul Abadie, who had replaced the departmental architect Catoire following criticism and who had begun work on the southern cupola in 1852; eventually he completely reconstructed all five domes and much more: see Laroche, Claude, ‘Saint-Front de Périgueux, ou la coupole réinventé’, in Paul Abadie, architecte, 1812-1884 (Paris, 1988), pp. 111-29Google Scholar; and Leniaud, Cathédrales, p. 327. A photograph of 1851 of St Front showing the old roof and the unrestored stonework is reproduced in de Mondenard, La Mission héliographique, p. 255; a similar distant view from the south-east, taken soon after restoration work had commenced on the exterior, is reproduced in Baum, Romanesque, p. 16. The discussion of St Front in his RA Lecture XVII (1873); Scott, , Lectures, II, p. 278 Google Scholar, confirms that Scott accepted Abadie’s working hypothesis that the domes were originally visible externally and crowned by lanterns. Parker, (Tour, 1853, p. 2)Google Scholar agreed, as did Petit in Architectural Studies, who illustrated one of the domes inside the roof (p. 68), and referred to Verneilh, Félix de, L’Architecture Byzantine en France, Saint Front de Périgueux, et les Eglises à coupoles de l’Aquitaine (Paris, 1851)Google Scholar, writing that, ‘The church does not at present exhibit the external outline intended by the architect. There appears to be quite sufficient data for ascertaining what this was, and for effecting a very accurate restoration. M. de Verneihľs frontispiece gives probably the least conjectural restoration that has ever yet been proposed for any building. Most of what he represents actually exists, and whose renewal would be necessary, the building seems rather to give definitely, than to suggest vaguely, the forms required’ (p. 67). Plates of St Front drawn by Viollet-le-Duc illustrating the domes exposed and restored were also published in vol. и of Gailhabaud, Jules, Monuments Anciens et Modernes (Paris, 1850)Google Scholar. It should be noted that de Verneilh was horrified by the restoration of St Front that he helped inspire and, along with his brother Jules, became highly critical of Abadie: see Marcel Durliat, ‘Abadie et la restauration monumentale au XIXe siècle’, in Abadie, pp. 14-19.

65 Murray, , France (1870), p. 263 Google Scholar, noted that the church ‘has been undergoing … such extensive repairs as amount to rebuilding; in fact, the entire edifice has been taken down and re-erected from the foundation, the walls having begun to crack under the weight of the domes. The result is a handsome and substantial modern copy, at the cost of the annihilation of nearly all that made the building curious and valuable, as the earliest mediaeval structure in France on a large scale. May we in England be preserved from such destructive restorations’. Leniaud, Cathédrales, comments, p. 328, ‘L’insuffisance technique n’explique cependant, pas le parti de “restauration”. Ce que reconstruit Abadie, c’est le vrai Saint-Front, celui que n’ont pas été capables de réaliser les architects romans: il présente un plan logique et clair; il est rationellement édifié’. Denslagen, Architectural restoration, p. 104, quotes Abadie writing in 1865 that ‘If I were in charge, I would demolish the Gothic choir, because it is like a pustule on the brow of a classical statue, and I would rebuild the apse, the foundations of which remain’; he did so in 1873.

66 The ‘resident architect’ was probably C. Vauthier, who had been Inspecteur des Travaux Diocésains de Périgueux since 1852 and who died in 1866: Larosse, Abadie, pp. 112 and 357; Leniaud, Cathédrales, p. 801.

67 In his lecture ‘On the Conservation of Ancient Architectural Monuments and Remains’ delivered at the RIBA earlier in 1862 (see note 22), Scott recalled (p. 80) that ‘When I was preparing, some time since, a lecture for the Royal Academy on the rise of pointed architecture, I had a great desire to see a drawing of any capitals which might exist at Perigueux, and on making enquiry of a friend who had just been there, he said, “Oh, I could have got you one if I had known, for the old ones were lying about among the old materials”’.

68 The church of St Etienne or the Église de la Cité, the cathedral until 1669, had been made a Monument Historique in 1840; Murray, France (1870), noted that it ‘is also a domical eh., of which 2 bays only remain; the W. bay rude, and simple, is nearly of the same age as St. Front; the E. bay, destroyed with the rest of the ch. by the Huguenots, 1577, was very carefully rebuilt 16x5’. A view of the exterior of the chevet taken by Mestral in 1851 is reproduced in de Mondenard, La Mission héiiographique, p. 255; for further photographs see Baum, Romanesque, p. IX &c, and also see Petit, Architectural Studies, p. 63. Scott illustrated the interior in his RA Lecture XVII (1873); Scott, , Lectures, II, p. 273 Google Scholar.

69 The tomb of Bishop Jean d’Asside by Constantine de Jarnac stands against the north wall of the nave.

70 Scott referred to an unfoliated capital at Tulle (Corrèze) in a later footnote to his RA Lecture III; Scott, , Lectures, 11, p. 123 Google Scholar. Murray, , France (1861), noted (p. 245)Google Scholar: ‘The Cathedral had a slice cut from it, in Revolutionary times, to make way for a public walk. The nave only remains, of granite, in a severe and early style of Gothic.’ Scott made the journey from Périgueux to Clermont through Tulle by road, presumably in a diligence; he could have travelled from Angoulême to Périgueux by railway but on a roundabout route via the junction at Courtras.

71 The town Scott visited was Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme). Murray, , France (1861), described it (p. 396)Google Scholar as ‘a cheerful town, which, in consequence of improvements, has lost the gloomy character which once distinguished it, its houses, built of dull grey lava, being now whitewashed. Its principal interest is derived from its situation on a hill, composed chiefly of volcanic tuff, in the fertile Limagne, in the midst of mountainous country, at the foot of that extraordinary range of extinct volcanoes which rear their conic or crater-shaped forms around’.

72 See Baum, Romanesque, p. 83 &c. The Romanesque church of Notre Dame du Port was noticed by Petit, p. 129; Scott illustrated the interior in his RA Lecture XVII on domes (1873): Scott, , Lectures, 11, p. 276 Google Scholar. Plates drawn by Viollet-le-Duc showing the church restored were published in vol. II of Gailhabaud, , Monuments Anciens et Modernes (Paris, 1850)Google Scholar. The minutes reproduced in Bercé, Françoise, Les premiers travaux de la Commission des Monuments Historiques, 1837-1848 (Paris, 1979), p. 173 Google Scholar, record that in 1842 the Commission discussed restoration proposals for ‘cet édifice excessivement intéressant’ by Aymon Gilbert Mallay (1805-83), Architecte Diocésain for Clermont, Saint-Fleur and Puy since 1849: see Leniaud, Les cathédrales. Mallay had published an Essai sur les Eglises Romanes et Romano-Byzantines du Département du Puy-de-Dôme in 1838 and 1841 and then ruthlessly restored the cathedral at Le Puy after 1848; Réau, , Vandalisme, 11, p. 331 Google Scholar, put him in his ‘pilori des vandales’ (along with Abadie, Viollet-le-Duc and Debret) for destroying murals and a Gothic chapel there. The documents quoted by Bercé suggest that having employed Mallay on several restorations, the Commission des Monuments Historiques did not hold him in high esteem and soon shunted him off to the Service des Édifices Diocésains.

73 St Paul at Issoire was discussed by Petit in Architectural Studies, pp. 127-29; the churches at both Issoire and S. Nectaire were photographed by Baldus in 1854 and are illustrated in Daniel, Malcolm, The Photographs of Edouard Baldus (New York & Montreal, 1994), p. 39 Google Scholar & pl. 16.

74 Murray, , France (1861), considered (p. 397)Google Scholar that the interior of the cathedral was ‘all of a piece, presenting one harmonious whole, remarkable for its lightness and loftiness, the vaulted roof (of tufa) being more than 100 ft. above the pavement… The painted glass is very beautiful’.

75 The high altar (without its enamels) was exhibited at the 1855 Paris Exposition Universelle, where this ‘splendid altar by Bachelet from design by Viollet le Duc’ was drawn by Scott in his sketchbook of 1855 at the RIBA (ScGGS[5]19): see Middleton, ‘Viollet-le-Duc’, p. 212. It superseded a project for the altar by Mallay and was installed in 1856; Leniaud, Cathédrales, pp. 419-30, considers that it was the first neo-Gothic piece to be placed in a French cathedral. An elevation drawing of the high altar is reproduced in Midant, Jean-Paul, Viollet-le-Duc. The French Gothic Revival (Paris, 2002), p. 134 Google Scholar.

76 The maintenance and repair of the cathedral was the responsibility of A. G. Mallay but presumably in a subordinate capacity under Viollet-le-Duc who was in overall charge after 1855 (see note 72 above). The cathedral at Clermont — which Murray, , France (1861), thought (p. 397)Google Scholar ‘externally an irregular pile of dark lugubrious hue, from the black lava of Volvie, of which it is built’ — was incomplete when Scott saw it as only four bays of the nave had been built in the thirteenth century. It had suffered badly and was almost demolished during the Revolution. The west end was taken down after 1855 when Viollet-le-Duc was commissioned to lengthen the nave and build a new west front with twin towers and spires; work began in 1862 and was completed by his favourite pupil Anatole de Baudot (1834-1915): see Foucart, Bruno et al., Viollet-le-Duc (Paris, 1980), pp. 186-87Google Scholar.

77 Now known as Mozac (Puy-de-Dôme); Murray, , France (1870), noted (p. 434)Google Scholar that ‘About a mile from Riom, on the W., is the village of Mosac, whose church has been attributed to Pepin’, but Petit did not mention it. A. G. Mallay (see note 72 above) was asked to survey the church; Françoise Bercé, Les premiers travaux, p. 319, records minutes for 1844: ‘L’édifice est intéressant, mais le projet de M. Mallay comprend une restauration complete, avec des additions que rien ne justifie, le project doit être écarté.’ In 1848 Mallay proposed restoration work to the crypt.

78 The Romanesque church of St Amable at Riom (Puy-de-Dôme) was restored by A. G. Mallay. The Ville de Riom kindly informs me that the Archives Départementales de Clermont-Ferrand hold drawings by Mallay dated 1851 showing the existing state of the church and the proposals for restoration which involved replacing the Classical west front as well as rebuilding the crossing tower and transepts. According to Petit, Architectural Studies, p. 129, St Amable, ‘though much altered and modernized, retains some of its Auvergnese features’.

79 Murray, , France (1870), noted (p. 434)Google Scholar ‘The Sainte Chapelle, attached to a modern Palais de Justice, is, like that of Paris, a light and lofty lantern of stone, built 1382 … St. Amable is a curious church, which will interest the architect and antiquary’.

80 The Grand Central Railway of the Chemin de Fer d’Orleans from Moulins to Clermont past Nevers had been open since 1855.

81 Pierre Paillard had replaced Jean Boivin as architect to Nevers Cathedral (Nièvre) in 1853 but his conduct of the work was criticised in 1856: see Leniaud, Cathédrales, p. 762. Murray, , France (1861), noted (p. 375)Google Scholar in the cathedral of St Cyr ‘in the S. transept a rich flamboyant doorway, leading to a fanciful spiral staircase, is a remarkable example of what Mr. Willis calls “interpenetration”, or the running of several series of mouldings into one another; these complicated interlacings pervade not only the canopy of the arch, but even the pinnacles’; this was presumably too late in date for Scott to notice or admire.

82 Both Nevers Cathedral and St Etienne were discussed by Petit, Architectural Studies, pp. 125-26.

83 See Baum, Romanesque, p. 107 &c. Scott described the vaults in St Etienne in his RA Lecture XI (1868); Scott, , Lectures, 11, p. 89 Google Scholar. The church had been restored by Pierre Paillard after 1853.

84 Murray, , France (1861), p. 375 Google Scholar: ‘St. Sauveur, near the Loire, another Romanesque church, is turned into a brewhouse; St. Genest, an example of the transition into the Pointed style, is also desecrated into a brewery.’

85 Probably St Pierre at Varzy (Yonne). Scott had left Nevers in a diligence and travelled to Vézelay and on to Auxerre by road.

86 The church of St Martin, Clamecy (Nièvre).

87 The chapel was that of the former Bethlehem hospital founded in 1147; the 1861 edition of Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in France did not mention Clamecy but the 1892, 18th edition, Part II, p. 395, noted: ‘Inn: Boule d’Or, good. The 12th cent. Church of Bethlehem serves as a dining-room’ — as it does today.

88 Fergusson, James, The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, 2 vols (London, 1855), 11, p. 655 Google Scholar: ‘the nave of Vezelay, which possesses all the originality of the Norman combined with the elegance of the Southern styles.’ Scott was mistaken in describing the church as a ‘cathedral.’ In his RA Lectures he made surprisingly few references to Vézelay and did not mention the sculpture; he quoted Viollet-le-Duc on the Romanesque vaulting at Autun and Vézelay and may not have realised at the latter that the French architect had replaced three bays of Gothic vaults over the nave by new vaults in the earlier manner to achieve stylistic purity: see Murphy, Vézelay, p. 114 &c.

89 Scott presumably did not wish to imply that the external portal sculpture had been destroyed by Viollet-le-Duc, whose careful drawing of the existing west elevation in 1840 confirms that it had already disappeared. The restoration of the church of the Madeleine at Vézelay was his first important such commission and the rebuilding and replacement work was carried out between 1840 and 1859. The new external tympanum was by the sculptor Michel Pascal, who also made replicas of a number of damaged capitals: see Viollet-le-Duc (Paris, 1980), pp. 150-53; Murphy, Vézelay. Murray, , France (1861), considered that (p. 366)Google Scholar ‘This church has been well restored (1855) by the French government’, but in the 1870,18th edition, this had been amended to (p. 401): ‘This eh., the finest of its class in France, was restored (1855) at the expense of the French Government, and has suffered greatly in the process of chiselling over the whole surface.’ As with the account of St Front in this edition (see note 65 above), it would be interesting to know who was responsible for Murray’s later more critical attitude to French restorations.

90 Murray, , France (1861), p. 366 Google Scholar: ‘Chapter-house, a low vaulted chamber, its roof resting on 2 clumsy central piers in the Romanesque style’ — in the 1870 edition the word ‘clumsy’ had been deleted. In his RA Lecture VIII (1866), Scott, , Lectures, II, p. 327 Google Scholar, Scott begged his audience, ‘if you go to Vezelay, to give plenty of time to the chapter-house, a truly exquisite work of the transitional period’.

91 Viollet-le-Duc rebuilt the cloister after 1850 and restored the chapter house in 1855: see Salet, Francis, ‘Viollet le Duc à Vézelay’, in Les Monuments Historiques de la France (Janvier-Juin 1965), nos 1-2, pp. 33–42 Google Scholar; and Murphy, Vézelay, pp. 123-26.

92 Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay (Yonne), where the church had been partly restored by Viollet-le-Duc between 1842 and 1849; his drawing of the west front in 1840 is reproduced in Midant, Viollet-le-Duc, p. 40. In 1846 Emile Amé replaced Comynet as Viollet’s inspector for the restorations at Vézelay, Montréal and here. Murray, France (1861), quoted Petit on the church which had been photographed by Edouard Baldus in 1851: see de Mondenard, La Mission héliographique, p. 292. A photograph of the west front before restoration is in Brossard, C., Géographie Pittoresque et Monumentale de la France: La France de l’Est (Paris, 1902), p. 397 Google Scholar. Petit, , in his Remarks on Church Architecture, 2 vols (London, 1841), 1 Google Scholar, illustrated the exterior or this church as his frontispiece and the interior on p. 165.

93 A general view of Auxerre Cathedral from the west was taken by Baldus in 1851: see de Mondenard, La Mission héliographique, p. 289.

94 The cathedral of St-Etienne at Auxerre (Yonne) had been demoted to parish church status and seems to have escaped a major nineteenth-century restoration; C.-N. Ledoux’s refurnishing of the choir and high altar of 1764-68 survives today. In 1844 the Commission des Monuments Historiques decided that nothing needed doing at the cathedral apart from a restoration of the crypt to protect the wall-paintings: see Françoise Bercé, Les premiers travaux, p. 286. In discussing the vandalism of the Huguenots at Auxerre in 1567, Dunlop, Ian, in his guide to Burgundy (London, 1990), p. 113 Google Scholar, quotes Viollet-le-Duc’s, Dictionnaire, VIII (1866), p. 175 Google Scholar, on how the sculpture had been mutilated by children ‘who, to this day, are allowed to do as they will although there are laws for the punishment of those who mutilate public buildings … The fact that this vandalism is tolerated by the town’s police does not prevent the same towns from having learned archaeological societies which preach readily against restorations which are not conducted to their liking. Would it not be more useful if they were to obtain from their magistrates a more attentive policing on the sites of these ceaseless mutilations of monuments which are unique and of the greatest value?’, a gratuitous aside which suggests that by this date Viollet-le-Duc, along with Merimée, increasingly resented local opposition to official restoration policy.

95 The Romanesque work at the episcopal palace was photographed by Baldus in 1851: see de Mondenard, La Mission héliographique, p. 292.

96 In his RA Lecture III (1858), Scott, , Lectures, 1, p. 95 Google Scholar, Scott confessed that ‘I am ashamed to say I had not seen this noble church till a short tour I have made during the present winter 1858 … I had unconsciously entertained a certain feeling of jealousy towards it, arising from the exaggerated opinions constantly expressed as to the entire dependence upon it of our Pointed style’ He had rejoined the railway system at Auxerre, where a branch connected with the main line of the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Lyon et la Mediterranée through Fontainebleau and Sens which had opened as far as Tonnerre in 1849.

97 Scott’s friend the Parker, Revd John Henry (1806-84), antiquary and publisher, author of An Introduction to the Study of Gothic Architecture (Oxford & London, 1849 &c)Google Scholar: see footnote 37 above. The fire at Sens had been in 1184.

98 R.A. Lecture III (1858), Scott, , Lectures, I, p. 96 Google Scholar: ‘the clerestory windows have, unfortunately, been renewed at a later age. It is generally stated that the whole of the vaulting was renewed with them: this, however, is incorrect; the only parts renewed were the side cells, which, as is proved by evidence I need not here go into, were round-arched, and came low in the clerestory wall, thus diminishing the height of the windows — a defect which led to their reconstruction’. Viollet-le-Duc, referred to the vaulting at Sens in his Dictionnaire, IV (1859), p. 49 Google Scholar. Branner, Robert, in Burgundian Gothic Architecture (London, 1960), p. 181 Google Scholar, would seem to confirm Scott’s conclusion, writing that the lateral webs of the vault were raised in the 1230s when new clerestory windows were created.

99 The thirteenth-century Palais synodal was restored by Viollet-le-Duc between 1855 and 1866. He had surveyed the mutilated building in 1851 and delegated the supervision of the work to the architect Louis Frederic Lefort, inspector for Sens with the Service des Edifices Diocésains since 1849: see Viollet-le-Duc (Paris, 1980), op. cit., pp. 66-71, for drawings and photographs of the building before and after the restoration; also see de Mondenard, La Mission héliographique, pp. 52, 53 and 75, for the photograph of the exterior taken by Edouard Baldus in 1851.

100 In volume VIII of his Dictionnaire Raisonné (1866), p. 76, Viollet-le-Duc claimed that ‘Cette salle est aujourd’hui complètement restaurée, sous la direction de la Commission des monuments historiques … Cette restauration a coûté 445000 fr. D’ailleurs, rien d’incertain ou d’hypothétique dans ce travail; car, pour les piliers, les voûtes hautes, il existe une grande quantité de fragments qui ont été conservées comme preuves, à l’appui de cette restoration.’

101 The restoration of Sens Cathedral was being conducted by Adolphe-Étienne Lance (1813-74), a pupil of Visconti and of Blouet, who had been appointed diocesan architect responsible for Sens in 1854 and whose demolition of the fourteenth-century side chapels at the end of 1862 was criticised in 1864 by Léon Lagrange and by the Société Archéologique de Sens; Lance responded that he enjoyed the ‘complete support and approval of a master whose archaeological knowledge, discerning taste and careful craftsmanship can scarcely be denied, namely Viollet-le-Duc’, who, in his Dictionnaire raisonné, 11 (1854), p. 348, had published a hypothetical original plan of the cathedral without side chapels: see Denslagen, Architectural restoration, p. 118; Leniaud, Viollet-le-Duc, p. 82.

102 St Denis Abbey church had been under restoration by Viollet-le-Duc since 1851 with A.-E. Lance as clerk of works 1850-54 (see note 101 above); the external work was begun in 1860. Galignani’s New Paris Guide for 1861 (Paris, 1861), pp. 538-40, noted for St Denis that ‘at present the floor is being lowered, a vault constructed for the Imperial dynasty, and a monument erected to Napoleon I … In consequence of the repairs now in progress, many parts of the church … are not now open to the public’.

103 In his published RA Lecture III (1858), Scott, , Lectures, 1, p. 77 Google Scholar, Scott noted that Suger ‘had rebuilt the nave of his church, and also the west front, as it existed previously to the wretched restorations which have rendered nearly worthless the most valuable landmark in the history of the transition’. The abbey church of St Denis had been in the disastrous care of the classical architect François Debret (1777-1850), a pupil of Percier, from 1813 until his dismissal in 1846: see note 105 below.

104 Scott discussed the capitals and sculpture on the north transept doorway in his RA Lecture III (1858); Scott, , Lectures, 1, pp. 80 Google Scholar and 319.

105 Under Debret’s restoration, in 1839, over an inch of stone was cut from the west front. In 1845 the northwest tower, rebuilt by Debret in 1838 after the spire was struck by lightning and taken down, began to collapse as the new structure was too heavy and it had to be demolished (Viollet-le-Duc’s project to rebuild it was cancelled by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and, surprisingly, it has not been reconstructed since); Debret was dismissed (but made a member of the Conseil Général des Bâtiments Civils) and succeeded by Viollet-le-Duc: see Réau, , Vandalisme, II, pp. 107-09Google Scholar; Leniaud, Jean-Michel, ‘Une simple querelle de clocher? Viollet-le-Duc à Saint-Denis (1846)’, Revue de l’art, no. 101 (1993), pp. 17–28 Google Scholar; Leniaud, Jean-Michel, Saint-Denis de 1760 à nos jours (Paris, 1996), pp. 168-69Google Scholar; Middleton & Watkin, Neoclassical and 19th Century Architecture, p. 358.

106 St Pierre de Montmartre, which was illustrated in vol. 1 of the elder Pugin’s Paris and its Environs (London, 1831), would soon be restored. Scott mentioned the ‘Byzantinesque foliage’ here in his RA Lecture VIII (1866); Scott, , Lectures, 1, p. 320 Google Scholar.

107 Scott illustrated the interior of the choir in his RA Lecture VIII (1866); Scott, , Lectures, 1, on pp. 321 Google Scholar, 322 and 323: ‘The church is little known, but is well worthy of attention. It shows how mistaken is the idea that the Early French style is not suited to small buildings.’ On p. 97 he noted how ‘It is curious to observe precisely the same art as in the eastern part of Nôtre Dame exhibited in the tiny, but exquisite choir, close by, of St Julien le Pauvre’ — just across the Pont au Double from the Ile de la Cité. Galignani’s New Paris Guide (1861) noted in the entry for the Hôtel Dieu that ‘In the adjoining court is a venerable and interesting chapel, built in the thirteenth-century, and once known as the church of St Julien le Pauvre … The public are admitted on Thursdays and Sundays, from 1 to 3; strangers with passports daily, on application at the bureau’.

108 The restoration of Notre-Dame, begun in 1845, had been conducted by Viollet-le-Duc alone since the death of his collaborator J.-B.-A. Lassus in 1857; the portal statuary was all replaced by 1864. In his RA Lecture VIII (1866), Scott, , Lectures, 1, p. 322 Google Scholar, Scott referred to ‘The transepts, now sadly over restored’.