Gothic architecture


Gothic architecture is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. It originated in the Île-de-France and Picardy regions of northern France. The style at the time was sometimes known as opus Francigenum ; the term Gothic was first applied contemptuously during the later Renaissance, by those ambitious to revive the architecture of classical antiquity.
The defining design element of Gothic architecture is the pointed arch. The use of the pointed arch in turn led to the development of the pointed rib vault and flying buttresses, combined with elaborate tracery and stained glass windows.
At the Abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris, the choir was reconstructed between 1140 and 1144, drawing together for the first time the developing Gothic architectural features. In doing so, a new architectural style emerged that emphasized verticality and the effect created by the transmission of light through stained glass windows.
Common examples are found in Christian ecclesiastical architecture, and Gothic cathedrals and churches, as well as abbeys, and parish churches. It is also the architecture of many castles, palaces, town halls, guildhalls, universities, and, less prominently today, private dwellings. Many of the finest examples of medieval Gothic architecture are listed by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites.
With the development of Renaissance architecture in Italy during the mid-15th century, the Gothic style was supplanted by the new style, but in some regions, notably England and what is now Belgium, Gothic continued to flourish and develop into the 16th century. A series of Gothic revivals began in mid-18th century England, spread through 19th-century Europe and continued, largely for churches and university buildings, into the 20th century.

Name

Medieval contemporaries characterised the style in Latin as , as , or as . Italian-speakers could call it .
The term "Gothic architecture" originated as a pejorative description. Giorgio Vasari used the term "barbarous German style" in his Lives of the Artists to describe what is now considered the Gothic style, and in the introduction to the Lives he attributes various architectural features to the Goths, whom he held responsible for destroying the ancient buildings after they conquered Rome, and for erecting new ones in this style. When Vasari wrote, Italy had experienced a century of building in the Vitruvian architectural vocabulary of classical orders revived in the Renaissance and seen as evidence of a new Golden Age of learning and refinement. Thus the Gothic style, being in opposition to classical architecture, from that point of view was associated with the destruction of progress and of sophistication. The assumption that classical architecture was better than Gothic architecture was widespread and proved difficult to counter. Vasari was echoed in the 16th century by François Rabelais, who referred to "Gotz" and "Ostrogotz".
The polymath architect Christopher Wren disapproved of the label "Gothic" for pointed architecture. He compared it to Islamic architecture, which he called the "Saracen style", pointing out that the pointed arch's sophistication was not owed to the Goths but to the Islamic Golden Age. He wrote:
Wren was the first to popularize the belief that it was not the Europeans, but the "Saracens" who had originated the Gothic style. Wren mentions Europe's architectural debt to the Saracens no fewer than twelve times in his writings. He also decidedly broke with tradition in his assumption that Gothic architecture did not merely represent a violent and bothersome mistake. Rather, Wren saw that the Gothic style had developed over time along the lines of a changing society, and that it was thus a legitimate architectural style in its own right.
It was no secret that Wren strongly disliked the building practices of the Gothic style. When he was appointed Surveyor of the Fabric at Westminster Abbey in the year 1698, he expressed his distaste for the Gothic style in a letter to the Bishop of Rochester:
The chaos of the Gothic left much to be desired in Wren's eyes. His aversion to the style was so strong that he refused to put a Gothic roof on the new St Paul's Cathedral, despite pressure to do so. Wren much preferred symmetry and straight lines in architecture, which is why he constantly praised the classic architecture of 'the Ancients' in his writings.
Even though he openly expressed his distaste for the Gothic style, Wren did not blame the Saracens for any apparent lack of ingenuity. Quite the opposite: he praised the Saracens for their "superior" vaulting techniques and their widespread use of the pointed arch. Wren claimed the inventors of the Gothic had seen the Saracen architecture during the Crusades, also called the religious war or "Holy War", originated in the Kingdom of France in the year 1095:
Several chronological issues arise from this statement, which is one of the reasons why Wren's theory is rejected by many. The earliest examples of the pointed arch in Europe date from before the First Crusade of 1096–1099; this is widely regarded as proof that the Gothic style could not have possibly been derived from Saracen architecture. Several authors have nevertheless claimed that the Gothic style had most likely filtered into Europe in other ways, for example through Spain or Sicily. Spanish architecture influenced by the Moors could have favoured the emergence of the Gothic style long before the Crusades took place. This could have happened gradually through merchants, travelers and pilgrims.
According to a 19th-century correspondent in the London journal Notes and Queries, "Gothic" was a derisive misnomer; the pointed arcs and architecture of the later Middle Ages differed radically from the rounded arches prevalent in late antiquity and in the period of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy:
File:Vista de Teruel desde la torre de la iglesia del Salvador, España, 2014-01-10, DD 82.JPG|thumb|Pointed arches in the 14th-century tower of the church of San Salvador at Teruel in Aragon

Influences

The Gothic style of architecture was strongly influenced by the Romanesque architecture which preceded it; by the growing population and wealth of European cities, and by the desire to express local grandeur. It was influenced by theological doctrines which called for more light and by technical improvements in vaults and buttresses that allowed much greater height and larger windows. It was also influenced by the necessity of many churches, such as Chartres Cathedral and Canterbury Cathedral, to accommodate growing numbers of pilgrims. It adapted features from earlier styles. According to Charles Texier and Josef Strzygowski, after lengthy research and study of churches in the medieval city of Ani, the capital of the medieval kingdom of Armenia, they believed that they had discovered the oldest Gothic arch. According to these historians, the architecture of the Saint Hripsime Church near the Armenian religious seat Etchmiadzin was built in the fourth century A.D. and was repaired in 618. The cathedral of Ani was built in 980–1012. However many of the elements of Islamic and Armenian architecture that have been cited as influences on Gothic architecture also appeared in Late Roman and Byzantine architecture, the most noticeable example being the pointed arch and flying buttress. The most notable example is the capitals, which are forerunners of the Gothic style and deviated with serpentine lines and naturalistic forms from the Classical standards of ancient Greece and Rome.

Periods

Architecture "became a leading form of artistic expression during the late Middle Ages". Gothic architecture began in the earlier 12th century in northwest France and England and spread throughout Latin Europe in the 13th century. By 1300, a first "International Style" of Gothic had developed, with common design features and formal language. A second "international style" emerged by 1400, alongside innovations in England and central Europe that produced both the perpendicular and flamboyant varieties. Typically, these typologies are identified as:
  • – c. 1240 Early to High Gothic and Early English
  • c. 1240 – c.1350 Rayonnant and Decorated Style
  • c. 1350 – c. 1500 Late Gothic: flamboyant and perpendicular
  • c. 16th–18th century ''Post-Gothic''

    History

Early Gothic

Norman architecture on either side of the English Channel developed in parallel towards Early Gothic. Gothic features, such as the rib vault, had appeared in England, Sicily and Normandy in the 11th century. Rib-vaults were employed in some parts of the cathedral at Durham and in Lessay Abbey in Normandy. However, the first buildings to be considered fully Gothic are the royal funerary abbey of the French kings, the Abbey of Saint-Denis, and the archiepiscopal cathedral at Sens. They were the first buildings to systematically combine rib vaulting, buttresses, and pointed arches. Most of the characteristics of later Early English were already present in the lower chevet of Saint-Denis.
The Duchy of Normandy, part of the Angevin Empire until the 13th century, developed its own version of Gothic. One of these was the Norman chevet, a small apse or chapel attached to the choir at the east end of the church, which typically had a half-dome. The lantern tower was another common feature in Norman Gothic. One example of early Norman Gothic is Bayeux Cathedral where the Romanesque cathedral nave and choir were rebuilt into the Gothic style. Lisieux Cathedral was begun in 1170. Rouen Cathedral was rebuilt from Romanesque to Gothic with distinct Norman features, including a lantern tower, deeply moulded decoration, and high pointed arcades. Coutances Cathedral was remade into Gothic beginning about 1220. Its most distinctive feature is the octagonal lantern on the crossing of the transept, decorated with ornamental ribs, and surrounded by sixteen bays and sixteen lancet windows.
Saint-Denis was the work of the Abbot Suger, a close adviser of Kings Louis VI and Louis VII. Suger reconstructed portions of the old Romanesque church with the rib vault in order to remove walls and to make more space for windows. He described the new ambulatory as "a circular ring of chapels, by virtue of which the whole church would shine with the wonderful and uninterrupted light of most luminous windows, pervading the interior beauty." To support the vaults he also introduced columns with capitals of carved vegetal designs, modelled upon the classical columns he had seen in Rome. In addition, he installed a circular rose window over the portal on the façade. These also became a common feature of Gothic cathedrals.
Some elements of Gothic style appeared very early in England. Durham Cathedral was the first cathedral to employ a rib vault, built between 1093 and 1104. The first cathedral built entirely in the new style was Sens Cathedral, begun between 1135 and 1140 and consecrated in 1160. Sens Cathedral features a Gothic choir, and six-part rib vaults over the nave and collateral aisles, alternating pillars and doubled columns to support the vaults, and buttresses to offset the outward thrust from the vaults. One of the builders who is believed to have worked on Sens Cathedral, William of Sens, later travelled to England and became the architect who, between 1175 and 1180, reconstructed the choir of Canterbury Cathedral in the new Gothic style.
Sens Cathedral was influential in its strongly vertical appearance and in its three-part elevation, typical of subsequent Gothic buildings, with a clerestory at the top supported by a triforium, all carried on high arcades of pointed arches. In the following decades flying buttresses began to be used, allowing the construction of lighter, higher walls. French Gothic churches were heavily influenced both by the ambulatory and side-chapels around the choir at Saint-Denis, and by the paired towers and triple doors on the western façade.
Sens was quickly followed by Senlis Cathedral, and Notre-Dame de Paris. Their builders abandoned the traditional plans and introduced the new Gothic elements from Saint-Denis. The builders of Notre-Dame went further by introducing the flying buttress, heavy columns of support outside the walls connected by arches to the upper walls. The buttresses counterbalanced the outward thrust from the rib vaults. This allowed the builders to construct higher, thinner walls and larger windows.
File:Canterbury Cathedral Choir.jpg|thumb|Early English; choir of Canterbury Cathedral