Gothic architecture

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See also Gothic art.

Gothic architecture is a style of architecture, particularly associated with cathedrals and other churches, which flourished in Europe during the high and late medieval period. Beginning in twelfth century France, it was known as "the French Style" (Opus Francigenum) during the period, with the term Gothic first appearing in the Reformation era as a stylistic insult. Its characteristic features include the pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the flying buttress.

It was succeeded by Renaissance architecture beginning in Florence in the fifteenth century.

A series of Gothic revivals began in mid-eighteenth century England, spread through nineteenth century Europe and continued, largely for ecclesiastical and university structures, into the twentieth century.

Contents

[edit] Origin

The style originated at the abbey church of Saint-Denis in Saint-Denis, near Paris, where it exemplified the vision of Abbot Suger. Suger wanted to create a physical representation of the Heavenly Jerusalem, a building of a high degree of linearity that was suffused with light and color. The façade was actually designed by Suger, whereas the Gothic nave was added some hundred years later. He designed the façade of Saint-Denis to be an echo of the Roman Arch of Constantine with its three-part division. This division is also frequently found in the Romanesque style. The eastern "rose" window, which is credited to him as well, is a re-imagining of the Christian "circle-square" iconography. The first truly Gothic construction was the choir of the church, consecrated in 1144. With its thin columns, stained-glass windows, and a sense of verticality with an ethereal look, the choir of Saint-Denis established the elements that would later be elaborated upon during the Gothic period. This style was adopted first in northern France and then in England since it was ruled by an Angevin dynasty,[1] and spread throughout France, the Low Countries and parts of Germany and also to Spain and northern Italy.

Notre-Dame Cathedral seen from the River Seine.
Notre-Dame Cathedral seen from the River Seine.

[edit] The term "Gothic"

Gothic architecture has nothing to do with the historical Goths. It was a pejorative term that came to be used as early as the 1530s to describe culture that was considered rude and barbaric. François Rabelais imagines an inscription over the door of his Utopian Abbey of Thélème, "Here enter no hypocrites, bigots..." slipping in a slighting reference to "Gotz" (rendered as "Huns" in Thomas Urquhart's English translation) and "Ostrogotz." In English seventeenth century usage, "Goth" was an equivalent of "vandal," a savage despoiler with a Germanic heritage and so came to be applied to the architectural styles of northern Europe before the revival of classical types of architecture. On 21 July 1710, the Académie d'Architecture met in Paris, and among the subjects they discussed, the assembled company noted the new fashions of bowed and cusped arches on chimneypieces being employed "to finish the top of their openings. The Company disapproved of several of these new manners, which are defective and which belong for the most part to the Gothic."[2] '"There can be no doubt that the term 'Gothic' as applied to pointed styles of ecclesiastical architecture was used at first contemptuously, and in derision, by those who were ambitious to imitate and revive the Grecian orders of architecture, after the revival of classical literature. Authorities such as Christopher Wren lent their aid in deprecating the old mediæval style, which they termed Gothic, as synonymous with every thing that was barbarous and rude.", according to a correspondent in Notes and Queries No. 9. December 29, 1849.

[edit] Characteristics

In Gothic architecture, new technology stands behind the new building style. That new technology was the ogival or pointed arch. Other features developed as the consequence of the use of the pointed arch.

The Gothic style emphasizes verticality and features almost skeletal stone structures with great expanses of glass, ribbed vaults, clustered columns, sharply pointed spires, flying buttresses and inventive sculptural detail such as gargoyles.

Internally there is a focus on large stained-glass windows that allow more light to enter than was possible with the previous Romanesque style. To achieve this lightness, flying buttresses were used between windows as a means of support to enable higher ceilings and slender columns. Many of these features had already appeared, for example in Durham Cathedral, whose construction started in 1093.

As a defining characteristic of Gothic Architecture, the pointed arch was introduced for both visual and structural reasons. Visually, the verticality suggests an aspiration to Heaven. Structurally, its use gives a greater flexibility to Architectural form. The Gothic vault, unlike the semi-circular vault of Roman and Romanesque buildings, can be used to roof rectangular and irregularly shaped plans such as trapezoids. The other advantage is that the pointed arch channels the weight onto the bearing piers or columns at a steep angle.

In Gothic Architecture the pointed arch is used in every location where a vaulted shape is called for, both structural and decorative. Gothic openings such as doorways, windows, arcades and galleries have pointed arches. Gothic vaulting above spaces both large and small is usually supported by richly molded ribs. Rows of arches upon delicate shafts form a typical wall decoration known as blind arcading. Niches with pointed arches and containing statuary are a major external feature. The pointed arch leant itself to elaborate intersecting shapes which developed within window spaces into complex Gothic tracery forming the structural support of the large windows that are characteristic of the style.

Conservative thirteenth century Gothic in Provence: Basilica of Mary Magdalene, Saint Maximin la Sainte Baume.
Conservative thirteenth century Gothic in Provence: Basilica of Mary Magdalene, Saint Maximin la Sainte Baume.

Gothic cathedrals could be highly decorated with statues on the outside and painting on the inside. Both usually told Biblical stories, emphasizing visual typological allegories between Old Testament prophecy and the New Testament.

Important Gothic churches could also be severely simple. At the Basilica of Mary Magdalene in Saint-Maximin, Provence (illustration, right), the local traditions of the sober, massive, Romanesque architecture were still strong. The basilica, begun in the thirteenth century under the patronage of Charles of Anjou, was laid out on an ambitious scale (it was never completed all the way to the western entrance front) to accommodate pilgrims that came to venerate relics. Building in the Gothic style continued at the basilica until 1532.

The Gothic cathedral was supposed to be a microcosm representing the world, and each architectural concept, mainly the loftiness and huge dimensions of the structure, were intended to pass a theological message: the great glory of God versus the smallness and insignificance of the mortal being.

[edit] Brick Gothic

Main article: Brick Gothic

In Northern Germany, Scandinavia, Baltic countries and northern Poland, in areas where native stone was unavailable, simplified provincial Gothic churches were built of brick. The resultant style is called Backsteingotik. in Germany and Scandinavia.

The Teutonic Knights' castle of Malbork
The Teutonic Knights' castle of Malbork

The biggest brick Gothic building is Malbork, a castle of the Teutonic Knights in Poland, while the biggest brick Gothic church is the St. Mary's Church, Gdańsk in Gdańsk. The most famous example in Denmark is Roskilde Cathedral. Brick Gothic buildings were associated with the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Knights. There are over one hundred brick Gothic castles in northern Poland, Baltic states, and western Russia.

[edit] Sequence of Gothic styles: France

The designations of styles in French Gothic architecture are as follows:

  • Early Gothic
  • High Gothic
  • Rayonnant
  • Late Gothic or Flamboyant style

These divisions are effective, but still sets grounds for many debatable issues. Because Gothic cathedrals were built over several successive periods, each period not necessarily following the wishes of previous periods, the dominant architectural style changes throughout a particular building. Consequently, it is often difficult to declare one building as a member of a certain era of Gothic architecture. It is more useful to use the terms as descriptors for specific elements within a structure, rather than applying it to the building as a whole.

Coutances Cathedral in France
Coutances Cathedral in France

Early Gothic:

High Gothic:

Rayonnant:

Late Gothic:

Aside of these Gothic style there is another style called "Gothique Méridional" (or Southern Gothic, opposed to Gothique Septentrional or Northern Gothic). This style is characterised by a large nave and has no transcept. Examples of this Gothic architecture would be:

[edit] Sequence of Gothic styles: England

Salisbury Cathedral detail
Salisbury Cathedral detail

The designations of styles in English architecture still follows conventions of labels given them by the antiquary Thomas Rickman, who coined the terms in his Attempt to Discriminate the Style of Architecture in England (1812−1815).

Early English:

Decorated:

Perpendicular:

[edit] Sequence of Gothic styles: Spain

The designations of styles in Spanish Gothic architecture are as follows. Dates are approximative.

  • Early Gothic (twelfthth century)
  • High Gothic (thirteenth century)
  • Mudejar Gothic (from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries)
  • Levantino Gothic (fourteenth century)
  • Isabelline Gothic (fifteenth century)

Gothic style started in Spain as a result of European influence in twelfth century when late Romanesque alternated with few expressions of pure Gothic architecture. The High Gothic arrives with all its strength through the Way of Saint James in the thirteenth century, with some of the most pure classical Gothic cathedrals, with German and French influence. The most important post−thirteenth-century Gothic styles in Spain are the Levantino, characterized by its structural achievements and the unification of space, and Isabelline Gothic, made under the Catholic Kings, that supposed a transition to Renaissance. Gothic style was sometimes adopted by the Mudejar architects, who built with Spanish-Arab techniques and materials, and created an hybrid style.

Early Gothic

High Gothic

Mudejar Gothic

Levantino Gothic

Isabelline Gothic

[edit] Sequence of Gothic styles: Portugal

  • Romanesque-Gothic Transition (12th century)
  • Early Gothic (13th century)
  • High Gothic (14th to the mid-15th centuries)
  • Manueline (mid-15th century 16th century)

The first entirely Gothic construction in Portugal was the Monastery of Alcobaça (works began in 1178 and was first inhabited in 1222). In the meantime, the transitiuon between Romanesque and Gothic styles slowly took place in Portuga, with many churches having been built in this transitionary style. Much like in the rest of Europe, such distinctions are difficult to categorize, with many styles being present in Gothic Portuguese architecutre, in fact it is not uncommon to see Romanesque elements as late as the 14th century.

Manueline style, unique to this part of Europe was named after king Manuel I, whose reign coincided with the development of the style. Manueline incorporates maritime elements and representations of the discoveries brought from the voyages of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral and the other Portuguese explorers. The innovative style synthesizes aspects of Late Gothic architecture with Spanish Plateresque style, Italian, and Flemish elements. It marks the transition from Late Gothic to Renaissance. The construction of churches and monasteries in Manueline was largely financed by the lucrative spice trade with Africa, India and later Brazil.

Romanesque-Gothic Transition

Early Gothic

High Gothic

Manueline

[edit] Secular Gothic architecture in England

Few examples of secular structures in Gothic style survive. The "Old Palace" at Hatfield, built in 1497, is famous for its entrance wing with an imposing gatehouse, which gave access to the protected inner court. This is an example of the last phase of Gothic design in England which, due to its far northern situation, was still untouched by the Renaissance underway in central Italy. Local building traditions produced a vernacular style that was as important as Gothic in the final appearance. The roofs are tiled in the local East Anglian tradition. Substantial eaves enclose essential storage areas in spacious attics. The Gothic elements in these buildings are the paired lancet windows joined under a molding that threw rainwater away from their sills, and the buttresses between each pier and on the angles of the gatehouse tower.

Chateau d'Abbadie, Hendaye, France: a Gothic pile for the natural historian and patron of astronomy Antoine d'Abbadie, 1860 - 1870; Viollet-le-Duc, architect
Chateau d'Abbadie, Hendaye, France: a Gothic pile for the natural historian and patron of astronomy Antoine d'Abbadie, 1860 - 1870; Viollet-le-Duc, architect

[edit] Gothic survival and revival

Main article: Gothic revival architecture

In England, some discrete Gothic details appeared on new construction at Oxford and Cambridge in the late seventeenth century, and at the Archbishop of Canterbury's residence Lambeth Palace, a Gothic hammerbeam roof was built in 1663 to replace a building that had been sacked during the English Civil War. It is not easy to decide whether these instances were Gothic survival or early appearances of Gothic revival,.

In England in the mid-eighteenth century, the Gothic style was more widely revived, first as a decorative, whimsical alternative to Rococo that is still conventionally termed 'Gothick', of which Horace Walpole's Twickenham villa "Strawberry Hill" is the familiar example. Then, especially after the 1830s, Gothic was treated more seriously in a series of Gothic revivals (sometimes termed Victorian Gothic or Neo-Gothic). The Houses of Parliament in London are an example of this Gothic revival style, designed by Sir Charles Barry and a major exponent of the early Gothic Revival, Augustus Pugin. Another example is the main building of the University of Glasgow designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott.

In France, the towering figure of the Gothic Revival was Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who outdid historical Gothic constructions to create a Gothic as it ought to have been, notably at the fortified city of Carcassonne in the south of France and in some richly fortified keeps for industrial magnates (illustration, left). Viollet-le-Duc compiled and coordinated an Encyclopédie médiévale that was a rich repertory his contemporaries mined for architectural details but also include armor, costume, tools, furniture, weapons and the like. He effected vigorous restoration of crumbling detail of French cathedrals, famously at Notre Dame, many of whose most "Gothic" gargoyles are Viollet-le-Duc's. But he also taught a generation of reform-Gothic designers and showed how to apply Gothic style to thoroughly modern structural materials, especially cast iron.

Gasson Hall on the campus of Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
Gasson Hall on the campus of Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

[edit] Neo-Gothic in the twentieth century

Neo-Gothic continued to be considered appropriate for churches and college buildings well into the 20th century. Charles Donagh Maginnis's early buildings at Boston College helped establish the prevalence of Collegiate Gothic architecture on American university campuses, such as at Chicago, Princeton, Yale and Duke. It was also used for early steel skyscrapers such as the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning.

Cass Gilbert produced his 1907 90 West Street building and the 1914 Woolworth Building, both in Manhattan, in a neo-Gothic idiom. It was Raymond Hood's neo-Gothic tower that won the 1922 competition for the Chicago Tribune Tower, a late example of the vertical style that has been called "American Perpendicular Gothic."

Another Gothic structure of interest is the jailhouse built in DeRidder, Louisiana in 1914. The iron bars in most of the windows give the structure an eerie appearance. The structure includes shallow arches, dormer windows and has a central tower. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Cathedral is also a neo-Gothic structure.

The last prominent Gothic architect in America was probably Ralph Adams Cram, working in the 1910s and 1920s. With partner Bertram Goodhue they produced many good examples, like the sensitive and clever French High Gothic St. Thomas Episcopal Church, New York with its asymmetrical, urban facade in the heart of Manhattan. Working alone, Cram took up the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, what he meant to be the largest cathedral and largest Gothic structure in the world, again in French High Gothic. It remains unfinished. Both St. Thomas and St. John the Divine are built without steel.


[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "L'art Gothique", section: "L'architecture Gothique en Angleterre" by Ute Engel: L'Angleterre fut l'une des premieres régions à adopter, dans la deuxième moitié du XIIeme siècle, la nouvelle architecture gothique née en France. Les relations historiques entre les deux pays jouèrent un rôle prépondérant: en 1154, Henri II (1154-1189), de la dynastie Française des Plantagenêt, accéda au thrône d'Angleterre.
  2. ^ "pour terminer le haut de leurs ouvertures. La Compagnie a désapprové plusieurs de ces nouvelles manières, qui sont défectueuses et qui tiennent la plupart du gothique." Quoted in Fiske Kimball, The Creation of the Rococo, 1943, p 66.
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[edit] Further reading

  • Simson, Otto Georg von (1988). The Gothic cathedral: origins of Gothic architecture and the medieval concept of order. ISBN 0-691-09959-6
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[edit] See also

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