Gothic Art and Architecture

I

Introduction

Gothic Art and Architecture, style in European art and architecture that flourished from about 1140 to the end of the 16th century in many areas. It applies to religious and secular buildings, sculpture, stained glass, and illuminated manuscripts and other decorative arts. Originally the word “Gothic” was used by Italian Renaissance writers as a derogatory term for all art and architecture of the Middle Ages, which they regarded as comparable to the works of barbarian Goths. Since then the term has been restricted to the last major medieval period, immediately following the Romanesque style; the Gothic Age is now considered one of Europe's outstanding artistic eras.

II

Architecture

Gothic style found its greatest expression in architecture. Emerging in the first half of the 12th century from Romanesque antecedents, Gothic architecture continued well into the 16th century in Northern Europe, long after Renaissance style had permeated the other arts. Although a vast number of secular monuments were built in the style, it was as church architecture that the Gothic idiom reached its greatest heights.

In striking contrast to Romanesque style, in which the essential characteristics are round arches, a sturdy structure, and small windows, Gothic architecture is characterized by pointed arches, soaring spires, large traceried windows, and delicacy of structure. These aesthetic qualities depended on a structural innovation: the ribbed vault. Medieval churches had solid stone vaults (the structure that supports the ceiling or roof). Being extremely heavy, solid stone vaulting tended to push the walls outward, which could lead to the collapse of the building. In turn, walls had to be thick and heavy enough to bear the weight of the vaults. Early in the 12th century, masons developed the ribbed vault, which consists of thin arches of stone, running diagonally, transversely, and longitudinally. The new vault, which was thinner, lighter, and more versatile, allowed a number of architectural developments to take place.

Although the earliest Gothic churches assumed a wide variety of forms, the creation of a series of large cathedrals in northern France, beginning in the second half of the 12th century, took full advantage of the ribbed vault. Cathedral architects found that, since the outward thrusts of the vaults were concentrated in the small areas at the springing of the ribs and were also deflected downwards by the pointed arches, pressure could be readily countered by narrow buttresses and by flying buttresses, which slanted away from the wall to form an arch. Consequently, the thick walls of Romanesque architecture could largely be replaced by thinner walls with glazed windows, and buildings could reach unprecedented heights. A revolution in building techniques thus occurred.

With the Gothic vault, a ground plan could take a variety of shapes. The general plan of Gothic cathedrals, however, consisting of a long three-aisled nave, a transept and a choir and sanctuary, differs little from that of Romanesque churches. Gothic cathedrals also retained and expanded the loveliest creation of French Romanesque architecture, the chevet—the complex of forms at the east end of the church that includes the semicircular aisle known as the ambulatory, the chapels that radiate from it, and the lofty polygonal apse curving around the end of the building. The major divisions of the interior elevation of the Gothic nave and choir are likewise derived from Romanesque precedents. On the other hand, the tall attenuated piers of the ground-storey arcade, the pencil-thin vaulting shafts rising through the clerestory to the springing of the ribs, and the use of the pointed arch throughout the whole edifice all contribute to the loftiness and soaring effects that constitute Gothic architecture's most dynamic expression.

The primary purpose of the outer walls of the Gothic cathedral, with their tall buttresses and elegant flying buttresses, was to support the vaults. The west front, on the other hand, was designed to produce a dramatic and dignified effect. The typical Gothic western façade is also divided vertically into three sections, corresponding to its three portals at ground level and reflecting the three aisles of the interior. The façade is usually surmounted by twin spires, and the large rose window set above the central portal provides a magnificent focus for the whole west front.

A

Early Gothic Period

In France, during the first half of the 12th century, Gothic rib vaulting appeared sporadically in a number of churches. The particular phase of Gothic architecture that was to lead to the creation of the great northern European cathedrals, however, began in the early 1140s in the construction of the chevet of the royal abbey church of St-Denis, the burial church of the French kings and queens on the outskirts of Paris. In the ambulatory of St-Denis, the slim columns supporting the vaults and the absense of the dividing walls separating the radiating chapels result in a new sense of flowing space that presaged the expanded spaciousness of later interiors.

St-Denis led to the first of the great cathedrals, Notre Dame (begun 1163) in Paris, and, in the 1160s, to a period of experimentation in which the windows were enlarged to such an extent the walls were almost wholly translucent, and in which the size of the internal supports was reduced. The addition of an extra storey to the traditional three-storey elevation of the interior increased height dramatically. This additional storey, the triforium, consists of a narrow passageway inserted in the wall beneath the windows of the clerestory (upper part of the nave of a church, containing windows) and above the large gallery over the side aisles. The triforium opens out into the interior through its own miniature arcade.

B

High Gothic Period

The complexities and experiments of this early Gothic period were finally resolved in Chartres Cathedral (begun 1194). By omitting the second-storey gallery derived from Romanesque churches but retaining the triforium, a simplified three-storey elevation was re-established. Additional height was now gained by means of a lofty clerestory that was almost as high as the ground-storey arcade. The clerestory itself was now pierced in each bay or division by two very tall lancet windows surmounted by a rose window. Thus in Chartres Catherdral were established the major divisions of the interior that were to become standard in all later Gothic churches.

The High Gothic period, inaugurated at Chartres, culminates in Reims Cathedral (begun 1210). Rather cold and overpowering in its perfectly balanced proportions, Reims represents the classical moment of serenity and repose in the evolution of Gothic cathedrals. Bar tracery, that characteristic feature of later Gothic architecture, was an invention of the first architect of Reims. In the earlier plate tracery, as in the clerestory at Chartres, a solid masonry wall is pierced by a series of openings. In bar tracery, by contrast, a single window is subdivided into two or more lancets by means of long thin lines of stone, known as mullions. The top of the window is filled with a tracery design that produces the effect of a cut-out.

Reims follows the general scheme of Chartres. But another equally successful High Gothic solution to the problems of interior design occurs in the great five-aisled cathedral at Bourges (begun 1195). Instead of an enlarged clerestory, as at Chartres, the architect of Bourges created an immensely tall ground-storey arcade and reduced the height of the clerestory to that of the triforium. The brief interval of the High Gothic period is followed in the 1220s by the nave of Amiens Cathedral. The soaring effects, muted at Chartres and Reims, were taken up again at Amiens in the emphasis on verticality and in the attenuation of the supports. Amiens thus provided a transition to the loftiest of the French Gothic cathedrals, that of Beauvais. By superimposing on a giant ground-storey arcade (derived from Bourges) an almost equally tall clerestory, the architect of Beauvais reached the unprecedented interior height of 48 m (157 ft).