Friday, September 6, 2013
Gothic Architecture
Gothic art, the painting, sculpture,
and architecture
characteristic of the second of two great international eras that flourished in
western and central Europe during the Middle Ages.
Gothic art evolved from Romanesque
art and lasted from the mid-12th century to as late as the end of the 16th
century in some areas. The term Gothic was coined by classicizing Italian
writers of the Renaissance,
who attributed the invention (and what to them was the nonclassical ugliness)
of medieval architecture to the barbarian Gothic tribes that had destroyed the
Roman Empire and its classical culture in the 5th century ce. The term retained its derogatory overtones
until the 19th century, at which time a positive critical revaluation of Gothic
architecture took place. Although modern scholars have long realized that
Gothic art has nothing in truth to do with the Goths, the term Gothic remains a
standard one in the study of art history
Architecture
Architecture was the most important and original art
form during the Gothic period. The principal structural characteristics of
Gothic architecture arose out of medieval masons’ efforts to solve the problems
associated with supporting heavy masonry ceiling vaults over
wide spans. The problem was that the heavy stonework of the traditional arched
barrel vault and the groin vault exerted a tremendous downward and outward
pressure that tended to push the walls upon which the vault rested outward,
thus collapsing them. A building’s vertical supporting walls thus had to be
made extremely thick and heavy in order to contain the barrel vault’s outward
thrust.
Early
Gothic
This first phase lasted from the Gothic style’s
inception in 1120–50 to about 1200. The combination of all the aforementioned
structural elements into a coherent style first occurred in the Île-de-France
(the region around Paris), where prosperous urban populations had sufficient
wealth to build the great cathedrals
that epitomize the Gothic style. The earliest surviving Gothic building was the
abbey of Saint-Denis in Paris, begun in about 1140. Structures with similarly
precise vaulting and chains of windows along the perimeter were soon begun with
Notre-Dame de Paris (begun 1163) and Laon Cathedral (begun 1165). By this time
it had become fashionable to treat the interior columns and ribs as if each was
composed of a bunch of more slender parallel members. A series of four discrete
horizontal levels or stories in the cathedral’s interior were evolved,
beginning with a ground-level arcade, over which ran one or two galleries
(tribune, triforium), over which in turn ran an upper, windowed story called a
clerestory. The columns and arches used to support these different elevations
contributed to the severe and powerfully repetitive geometry of the interior.
Window tracery (decorative ribwork subdividing a window opening) was also
gradually evolved, along with the use of stained (coloured) glass in the
windows. The typical French early Gothic cathedral terminated at its eastern
end in a semicircular projection called an apse. The western end was much more
impressive, being a wide facade articulated by numerous windows and pointed
arches, having monumental doorways, and being topped by two huge towers. The
long sides of the cathedral’s exterior presented a baffling and tangled array
of piers and flying buttresses. The basic form of Gothic architecture
eventually spread throughout Europe to Germany, Italy, England,
the Low
Countries, Spain, and Portugal.
In England the early Gothic phase had its own
particular character (epitomized by Salisbury Cathedral) that is known as the
early English Gothic style (c. 1200–1300). The first mature example of
the style was the nave and choir of Lincoln
Cathedral (begun in 1192).
Early English Gothic churches differed in several
respects from their French counterparts. They had thicker, heavier walls that
were not much changed from Romanesque proportions; accentuated, repeated
moldings on the edges of interior arches; a sparing use of tall, slender,
pointed lancet windows; and nave piers consisting of a central column of
light-coloured stone surrounded by a number of slimmer attached columns made of
black purbeck marble.
Early English churches also established other
stylistic features that were to distinguish all of English Gothic: great length
and little attention to height; a nearly equal emphasis on horizontal and
vertical lines in the stringcourses and elevations of the interior; a square
termination of the building’s eastern end rather than a semicircular eastern
projection; scant use of flying buttresses; and a piecemeal, asymmetrical conception
of the ground plan of the church. Other outstanding examples of the early
English style are the nave and west front of Wells Cathedral (c. 1180–c.
1245) and the choirs and transept of Rochester Cathedral.
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