Identifier: brooklynmuseumqu46broouoft (find matches)
Title: Brooklyn Museum Quarterly
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Brooklyn museum quarterly
Subjects:
Publisher: Brooklyn
Contributing Library: Gerstein - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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n. As regards plan, the twist at the choir is a well-knownfeature of Northern Gothic and Romanesque. It has beenwidely explained, generally by sacristans, as having had asymbolic meaning, but this explanation has been finally, andconclusively, shown to be untenable by De Lasteyrie. ^ Theeffect of the twist is to increase perspective effect, to give amore picturesque vista and, generally speaking, to so decenterthe church optically as to destroy the unpleasantly formaleffects of parallel perspective when the spectator is in the La Deviation de Iaxe des eglisses, est elle symbolique? Paris, LibrairieC. Klincksieck, 1905. De Lasteyries conclusion is that the deflected choirs aredue to the lack of modern surveying instruments. That this conclusion is alsoerroneous may be easily shown. I considered this subject in the R. I. B. A.Journal, Vol. XV, No. 1, pp. 26-30, 1907, A Reply to Mr. Bilson. Much evi-dence has also been olttained since the date of that publication, to the same eiTect. 229
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Fig. 6. Plan of S. Pietro, Toscanella. Illustration of a prede-termined asymmetric plan. Brooklyn Museum Survey, 1895. Seenotes on the illustrations at the close of the article. middle of the church. The deflected choir phin is almostmiknown in Italy, as regards the exterior walls, and is onlyfound in churches under direct French influence. Italianchurches occasionally show an interior bend in plan of thearcades at the choir, which does not include the exteriorwalls. The S-shaped plan is found in notable instances likeChichester, Notre-Dame, Fiesole, Modena, and St. Ouen atRouen. It is also found in the Cathedral of Lyons. Thisreversing curve is probably the most beautiful and effectiveof all asymmetric plans. It should be remembered that allcurves or bends in plan are seen l)y the eyes as curves or bendsin elevation ^ and that the amount of curve changes with theangle of vision. Thus, in any given church any curve in planproduces an infinite variety of curves in elevation from anyone

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