(jazzy piano music)
- [Steven] We're in Salisbury Cathedral,
in southwest England.
This is an early Gothic church.
- [Beth] In England, we divide the Gothic
into three periods, the Early Gothic,
the Decorated Gothic, and Perpendicular.
And so here, we're at an Early moment
in the development of the Gothic style here in England.
In France, you could imagine the great cathedral
of Amiens, being built at the same time
- [Steven] But this is so clearly not a French cathedral.
This is a typical English cathedral,
in its layout, and in its scale.
It's enormous, but it doesn't reach the heights
of the French cathedrals during the High Gothic period.
That's not to say that this is a low ceiling.
The vault towers above us, and so
it really is just lower in comparison.
- [Beth] And one of the ways that the architect
emphasized that horizontality, is by the use
of a stone that we call Purbeck marble.
And its this dark, grayish-brown color,
and it's used to articulate
some of the horizontal members that draw our eye down.
- [Steven] You can see that especially
if you look at the interior elevation
above the nave arcade in the second level,
which we call the gallery.
- [Beth] We see typical Gothic decorative motifs,
such as quatrefoils, and pointed arches,
but in Purbeck, we see these bundled columns
that have a depth and energy to them.
- [Steven] And they emphasize the linear.
It's as if the entire church is outlined
with slender, columnar forms.
- [Beth] Well, we have these slender columns
in the nave that are surrounded
by smaller columns that are slightly detached.
But then, the pointed arch itself is so deep,
with its rolled molding, that emphasizes
the depth of the wall.
- [Steven] But we also see it in the dimensionality
of the wide gallery, and even above that,
in the depth of the clerestory,
where there's a narrow passage
between the exterior glass,
and the interior space of the nave.
- [Beth] This was all once brightly painted,
so what we're looking at is rolls of stone.
Each roll would've been picked out in different colors,
and so, it would have even seemed more linear, I think.
But we should start, perhaps, by just noting
that we have a typical Gothic elevation,
of a nave arcade with pointed arches,
and above that, that gallery,
and above that, a clerestory,
and then typical, ribbed, four-part groin vaults.
- [Steven] Salisbury Cathedral was built very quickly.
The main part of the church was built
within 38 years, which means there's
a continuity, a kind of consistency.
The cloister was added later,
and then the tower was raised higher,
and the spire was added.
- [Beth] And because that tower and spire is so heavy,
the architects added strainer arches
to help support that weight.
- [Steven] Not only are English cathedrals known
for these very long plans, in fact, so long
that they often have, at the east end,
an additional choir, known as a retrochoir.
- [Beth] And have a second transept.
- [Steven] Which allows for additional chapels,
which are often not found along the nave.
- [Beth] One of the other ways
that the architect emphasized the horizontal
as opposed to the vertical, is that we don't have
colonettes that rise from the floor
to articulate the ribbed groin vault.
Instead, the ribs of the vault
spring from these corbels.
But what's really fun, is right at the base
of each of those is a sculpted head.
- [Steven] It emphasizes this interest
in the decorative that is such a characteristic
of English cathedral architecture.
- [Beth] And I'm looking, too, at the gallery level,
where the two pointed arches meet,
and these decorative ballflowers.
- [Steven] Like all English churches,
this one has gone through substantial changes.
The choir screen that separated the church in two,
the laypeople in the west end of the church,
from the most sacred part, the east end.
- [Beth] And we're lucky that a piece
of that choir screen survives,
and it's beautifully decorated
with painted angels in the spandrels,
and gabled niches that would've once held statues.
- [Steven] And some wonderful examples of ballflowers.
You had mentioned that this church
was originally painted in different colors
to articulate the architecture,
but in the vaults high above us, above the choir,
in the eastern section of the church,
there were roundels of paintings
that historians believe reflected the liturgy
that was performed in the church below.
- [Beth] Those original Gothic paintings were covered over,
were white-washed, but we know that they included
images of prophets, and a sybil,
of angels, of Christ in majesty.
This church is filled with so much
19th century stained glass, but originally,
most of the stained glass was grisaille,
that it, tones of gray, and we can see some of that
in the south transepts.
But much of the Victorian stained glass
does include Biblical stories and figures,
and there are two especially beautiful windows
by the great Victorian artist Edward Burne-Jones.
These are two lancet windows that are occupied mostly
by these interlacing vines and leaves.
- [Steven] But the four angels
are brilliantly colored, one is green,
with these incredibly elaborate yellow wings.
We have a brilliant blue angel,
and both of those angels hold staffs.
On the right, we have two angels
that hold harps, and are both in brilliant red.
- [Beth] It's lovely to see these Burne-Jones windows
here at Salisbury Cathedral.
- [Steven] We've walked outside.
The outside is so different
from French Gothic cathedrals of the same period.
At Amiens, begun the same year as this church,
you have a massive porch,
with deep portals that draw you in.
- [Beth] And here, we see three doorways.
- [Steven] And I'm really struck
by how modestly scaled those doorways are.
And here, the west front,
is larger than the church behind it.
- [Beth] Now the figurative sculpture
that we're seeing today in the niches,
the vast majority of it is modern.
It's from the 19th century, and we're not even sure
how much sculpture was originally here
in the 13th century when the church was built.
If you look closely at the screen of figures
just above the central doorway,
there are small openings,
and there's a passageway behind this
that we believe was used for people to sing from
during liturgical festivals that took place
outside the west front of the church.
- [Steven] The conceit would be that the sculpted figures
that we see were actually singing to the crowd below.
Salisbury Cathedral, this early English Gothic-style Church,
will have an enormous impact on buildings
that are constructed later,
as the English Gothic-style develops.
And looking at the church, centered in this large close,
the church's grounds.
It's impossible not to think
of the early-19th century painter, John Constable,
and his multiple paintings of this church.
- [Beth] Well, the church does sit in a field,
and rises steeply up from that,
and Constable gives us that impression so well,
in the spire that reaches up toward the heavens,
and the sense of man's yearning
for the divine is very much present.
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