Dwarf gallery
The dwarf gallery (also wrongly called dwarf gallery ) is a decorative element of Romanesque architecture .
A dwarf gallery is an open arcade , usually just below the roof of a (church) building. It extends around parts of the building, for example an apse or entire buildings. At Speyer Cathedral, for example, a dwarf gallery extends around the entire nave . Despite its main decorative function, it can also be walked on.
The dwarf gallery appeared for the first time around 1050 on the west facade of Trier Cathedral and around 1100 on Speyer Cathedral as an element that encircles the entire building. Two variants developed: In the Upper Rhine variant, for example in Speyer, the gallery's walkway is arched by many small transverse barrels that rest on the pillars of the dwarf gallery. The Lower Rhine version, on the other hand, which is used in Cologne churches, for example, has a continuous longitudinal barrel behind the gallery arcade. Often it is connected to the panel frieze here.
Remarkably, both types appear at Mainz Cathedral : the older east apse is adorned with an Upper Rhine model, the late Romanesque west building with a Lower Rhine dwarf gallery over a plate frieze.
The dwarf gallery was quickly taken up in Central European architecture as a design element for an external wall, especially in Germany (Rhineland) and in northern and central Italy. There are churches with a façade consisting almost entirely of columned galleries, for example in Tuscany in Arezzo the ' Santa Maria della Pieve '. The famous leaning tower of Pisa also took up this principle and continued it in a particularly decorative form.
An innovation compared to Central European customs can be found in the Lombard Romanesque and the subsequent Lombard Gothic : Here, dwarf galleries can also be laid out under the sloping gable and rise with it.
There are few dwarf galleries in Romanesque architecture in France. Galleries with statues, which are not called dwarf galleries, are at the Romanesque church Ste-Croix in Bordeaux and as royal galleries at the Gothic cathedrals, for example in Paris and Amiens .
literature
- Günther Binding : Architectural Form Theory. 4th, revised and expanded edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-534-14084-2 .
- Wilfried Koch : Architectural style. The great standard work on European architecture from antiquity to the present. Special edition, expanded and completely reworked. Orbis Verlag für Journalistik, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-572-00689-9 . European architecture from antiquity to the present, with 50 distribution maps and a five-language glossary.
- Günther Kahl: The dwarf gallery. Origin, development and distribution of a single architectural form of the Romanesque (= contributions to art history and archeology. H. 3, ZDB -ID 526677-4 ). Triltsch, Würzburg 1939 (At the same time: Bonn, Universität, phil. Dissertation, 1936), (Reprint. Sn, sl 2000, ISBN 3-00-006122-3 ).
- Hans Erich Kubach: To the origin of the dwarf gallery. In: Joachim Glatz, Norbert Suhr (ed.): Art and culture on the Middle Rhine. Festschrift for Fritz Arens on his 70th birthday. Werner, Worms 1982, ISBN 3-88462-016-9 , pp. 21-26.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The term can be traced for the first time in Heinrich Otte : Archaeological dictionary to explain the art expressions used in writings on medieval art. Weigel, Leipzig 1857, p. 141 ( online ), there derived from "dwarf columns" in the sense of "small columns". Corresponding forms in English: "dwarf gallery" and in Dutch: "Dwerggalerie". The French form is "galerie naine" ("naine" - dwarf), in Italian the design is simply called "galleria". On the other hand, the etymological derivation of zwerch , an old subsidiary form of quer , (e.g. in the technical terms architecture (Uni Kiel) ( memento of February 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive )) and the spelling “Zwerchgalerie” developed from it is incorrect.
- ^ Koch: Architectural style. 1994, p. 92.
- ↑ Binding: Architectural Forms. 1998, p. 133 ff.