Notre-Dame, Cathedral of Amiens: The Power of Change in Gothic (review)

Reviews 221 Murray, Stephen, Notre-Dame, Cathedral ofAmiens: The Power of Change in Gothic, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996; cloth; pp. xix, 234; 16 figures, 195 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £55.00. This is an unusual monograph on a great cathedral, for Stephen Murray seems more interested in using it to illustrate certain ideas about 'change' than to provide a blow by blow history of the building. Murray senses the cathedral as a mystic force that 'is no defenseless prey to be surrounded. . . . (It) becomes active . . . do w e describe the building or does it reveal itself to us?' Imagining himself to be one of the builders, the cathedral becomes for him 'a real and active force, able to impose itself on its creators'. This lovely, and unexpectedly romantic, merging with the soul of the cathedral is repeated in groups of photos dynamically arranged, at times in star formation, to illustrate the feeling of moving down the nave or across the body of the choir. I salute Murray's courage in baring his heart and his love of this great work. Most monographs are dry affairs, full of facts. Murray's has these, but soul too with an understanding of the medieval sense of wonder. His opening quotation, from the thirteenth century, describes how 'all the people present, stupefied and in a state of ecstasy, were amazed'. Murray comes across, in spite of his erudition and his exemplary handling of the documentary sources, as a warm romantic disguised as an academic. I highly recommend this book. In determining the history of a complex building that took decades to create, it is vital to discover the sequence of construction. This is usually done by examining different styles or profiles and locating where the junctions lie between them. The first method fits each style into a predetermined process of artistic evolution—a technique that founders on its own pre-judged assumptions. The second method relies on the most painstaking observations, and is still the most promising approach, but it has two drawbacks. The examination must be painstaking, even to the hidden parts like staircases, or the results will be lopsided, and it presumes that a master's style neither changes nor is influenced by the evolution of the work itself. Murray is very conscious of this issue, and argues that many of the changes at Amiens come from the master's on-going creativity. The analytic techniques I developed twenty-five years ago for aboveground archaeology, which I call Toichology, are used by many scholars today, including Murray. Yet he makes no reference to m y Contractors of Chartres in which these techniques werefirstdeveloped. In a comment on the construction sequence at Chartres he cites in evidence only a short work 222 Reviews by van der Meulan. This is indicative of the difficulties many architectural historians have in dealing with a built object when their schooling is in documents and photographs. They have no training in building processes, in measuring and in drawing, and in the day to day exigencies of construction. I ran two workshops for art historians at Chartres to rectify this, but received no support when I later attempted to have these studies included in art historical training. Not understanding how a building is constructed has created a deep malaise in the profession and, as Murray's book shows, one that needs to be addressed if gothic studies are going to affect the 'real' world. I wonder if this is why no historian has asked the present maitre d'oeuvre forthe keys of the cathedral to check out m y work. Is it also why so few articles are published nowadays on medieval architecture? And is it why the number of sessions dedicated to this topic has slumped by 80 percent over the past fifteen years? It seems indicative of this problem that Murray is least skilled in construction geometry, and yet geometry was the essence of the Master's work, and therefore of his creative methodology, for it was only through geometry that he could control the job and maintain consistent instructions to his men. This he did through the templates, which were the full-size...