Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

454 Chapter 17 ROMANESQUE EUROPE

17-31Interior of Saint-Étienne, Caen, France,

vaulted ca. 1115–1120.

The groin vaults of Saint-Étienne made possible

an efficient clerestory. The three-story elevation

with its large arched openings provides ample

light and makes the nave appear taller than it is.

17-32Plan of Saint-Étienne, Caen, France.

The early-12th-century nave vaults of Saint-Étienne spring from com-

pound piers with alternating half-columns and pilasters. The diagonal

and transverse ribs divide the vaults into six compartments.

N

0 25 7550 1 00 feet

0 10 20 30 meters

11 th to early 12 th century

1 3th century

1 4th century

Sexpartite

vaults

design. Four large buttresses divide the facade
into three bays that correspond to the nave and
aisles. Above the buttresses, the towers also dis-
play a triple division and a progressively
greater piercing of their walls from lower to
upper stages. (The culminating spires are a
Gothic addition.) The tripartite division ex-
tends throughout the facade, both vertically
and horizontally, organizing it into a close-
knit, well-integrated design that reflects the
careful and methodical planning of the entire
structure.
The original design of Saint-Étienne called
for a wooden roof, as originally at Speyer Cathe-
dral. But the Caen nave (FIG. 17-31) had com-
pound piers with simple engaged half-columns
alternating with piers with half-columns at-
tached to pilasters. When the builders decided
to install groin vaults around 1115, the existing
alternating compound piers in the nave proved
a good match. Those piers soar all the way to
the vaults’ springing. Their branching ribs
divide the large square-vault compartments
into six sections, making a sexpartite vault
(FIG. 17-32). The vaults rise high enough to
provide room for an efficient clerestory. The
resulting three-story elevation, with its large
arched openings, admits more light to the
interior. It also makes the nave appear even
taller than it is. As in the Milanese church of
Sant’Ambrogio (FIG. 17-21), the Norman building has rib vaults. The
diagonal and transverse ribs compose a structural skeleton that par-
tially supports the still fairly massive paneling between them. Despite
the heavy masonry, the large windows and reduced interior wall sur-
face give Saint-Étienne’s nave a light and airy quality that is unusual in
the Romanesque period.
DURHAM CATHEDRALWilliam of Normandy’s conquest of
Anglo-Saxon England in 1066 began a new epoch in English history.
In architecture, it signaled the importation of Norman Romanesque
building and design methods. Durham Cathedral (FIGS. 17-33and
17-34) sits majestically on a cliff overlooking the Wear River in
northern England, the centerpiece of a monastery, cathedral, and
fortified-castle complex on the Scottish frontier. Unlike Speyer
Cathedral and Saint-Étienne, Durham Cathedral, begun around
1093—earlier than the remodeled Caen church—was a vaulted
structure from the very beginning. Consequently, the pattern of the
ribs of the nave’s groin vaults corresponds perfectly to the design of
the arcade below. Each seven-part nave vault covers two bays. Large,