File:Trees in nature, myth and art; (1907) (14576607590).jpg

Identifier: treesinnaturemyt00phyt (find matches)
Title: Trees in nature, myth and art;
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Phythian, John Ernest, 1858-
Subjects: Trees Trees Trees in art
Publisher: London : Metheun & Co.
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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Assyria, with their vaultedroofs, are still further removed from even re-mote resemblance to the woodland; and in thearched, vaulted and domed buildings of Romeno such suggestion was possible. It did become possible when the roof wascarried upon vaulting-ribs, branching out fromwall and column, and almost inevitably callingthe form of the tree to mind. But the grace-ful, tree-like vaulting of Gothic architecturewas only arrived at by experiment after experi-ment, carried on with blocks of stone, in orderto effect a practical not a poetic improvementin the building; and the earliest ribbed vaultsfurnish no suggestion of branches starting outfrom parent stems. It was because he knewthis that Kingsley renounced with a sigh the ideathat the high embowerd roof—in Miltonsphrase—of the Gothic cathedral had beenimitated from the groves in which the heathenancestors of the Gothic builders had worshipped. But the builders did see the resemblanceof their work to the forest-aisle; and, having
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THE ANGEL CHOIK, LINCOLN CATHEDRAL TREES IN ARCHITECTURE 179 seen it, set themselves to increase it. In Nor-man and even in Early English architecturewe find the resemblance little if at all workedout; but in the Decorated period, that is tosay, in the late thirteenth and early fourteenthcentury, it is taken up and elaborated. Itwas not done, however, in a realistic manner ;the base of the column was not made to re-semble the tree-roots gathering themselves intothe stem, to which the column itself was notmade to bear any close resemblance; the capi-tal was not abandoned because no such featurehad any counterpart in the tree; when, at alater date, it was often dispensed with, the re-semblance of the architecture as a whole tovegetation had diminished; the vaulting-ribsnever approached a deceptive likeness to leafybranches; all that was done was by the use ofthe forms of flower and foliage, at certainsalient points such as the capital and the key-stone, to emphasise the likeness of the

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