University of Virginia Library

V.1.3

A RENASCENCE
OF THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL

ALAN SORRELL, 1966

The interpretations of Fiechter-Zollikofer (1936), Völckers
(1937), and Gruber (1937) represented a radical departure

[ILLUSTRATION]

278. PLAN OF ST. GALL. OUTER SCHOOL

[Interpretation by Fiechter-Zollikofer, 1936, 407, fig. 6]

The St. Gall house is here reconstructed as a low-roofed, low-walled
gable house, of log construction, the center room receiving its light
through a tapering wooden shaft mounted upon the ridge of the
roof (see fig. 279).

from the views of the classicists by discarding all reference
to Roman or Gallo-Roman house construction. In 1965
this trend was reversed by a dramatic reconstruction painting
published in a beautifully illustrated book, The Dark
Ages, under the general editorship of a distinguished
Byzantinist, David Talbot Rice.[44] The painting (fig. 283)
carries the signature of Alan Sorrell and is executed in the
flamboyant chiaroscuro that characterizes the hand of this
great interpretive draftsman to whom we owe so many
other impressive reconstructions of medieval and Anglo-Roman
buildings now in ruin.

Unluckily, the scholarship that accompanied this drawing
is not commensurate with the skill of its draftsmanship.
The Church with its steep proportions and its elaborate
blind relief of pilasters and arches looks more like a
Romanesque cathedral than a Carolingian monastery

church. The design of the houses for the animals and their
keepers which occupy the tract to the west of the Church,
conversely, is a return to the superannuated concept of the
courtyard house, proposed by Keller in 1844 and by Lenoir
in 1852. The majority of the guest and service structures
are rendered as buildings of basilican design, in conformity
with the views expressed by Rahn in 1876, Schlosser in
1889, and Oelmann in 1923-4. Sorrell was obviously not
familiar with any of the reconstruction drawings published
by the opposing school (Fiechter-Zollikofer, Völckers, and
Gruber), nor for that matter with a reconstruction of my
own published by Poeschel in 1957 and by myself in 1958.[45]

[ILLUSTRATION]

280. PLAN OF ST. GALL. EXTERIOR PERSPECTIVE
HOUSE FOR DISTINGUISHED GUESTS

[as interpreted by Völckers, 1949, 34]

Völkers reconstructs the St. Gall house—correctly in our opinion—as a
steep-roofed structure hipped at the narrow ends, its center room lighted
by an opening in the ridge that is surmounted by a small protective roof.

[ILLUSTRATION]

281. PLAN OF ST. GALL. INTERIOR PERSPECTIVE
HOUSE FOR DISTINGUISHED GUESTS

[as interpreted by Völckers, 1949, 18]

The large center hearth on the Plan is termed "locus foci." Along the
walls are tables and benches where visitors and their servants take meals.
The rooms under the hipped portions of the roof are heated by their own
fireplaces.

His reconstruction gives the impression of being based on
the description of the Plan published in 1848 by Robert
Willis, who recognized that Keller's interpretation of the
St. Gall house as a courtyard house conflicted with the
inscriptions of the Plan, but did not relinquish this interpretation
in the case of houses for animals and their keepers.