Gothic art
Gothic art was a style of medieval art that developed in Northern France out of Romanesque art in the 12th century, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, and much of Northern, Southern and Central Europe, never quite effacing more classical styles in Italy. In the late 14th century, the sophisticated court style of International Gothic developed, which continued to evolve until the late 15th century. In many areas, especially Germany, Late Gothic art continued well into the 16th century, before being subsumed into Renaissance art. Primary media in the Gothic period included sculpture, panel painting, stained glass, fresco and illuminated manuscripts. The easily recognisable shifts in architecture from Romanesque to Gothic, and Gothic to Renaissance styles, are typically used to define the periods in art in all media, although in many ways figurative art developed at a different pace.
The earliest Gothic art was monumental sculpture, on the walls of Cathedrals and abbeys. Christian art was often typological in nature, showing the stories of the New Testament and the Old Testament side by side. Saints' lives were often depicted. Images of the Virgin Mary changed from the Byzantine iconic form to a more human and affectionate mother, cuddling her infant, swaying from her hip, and showing the refined manners of a well-born aristocratic courtly lady.
Secular art came into its own during this period with the rise of cities, foundation of universities, increase in trade, the establishment of a money-based economy and the creation of a bourgeois class who could afford to patronise the arts and commission works, resulting in a proliferation of paintings and illuminated manuscripts. Increased literacy and a growing body of secular vernacular literature encouraged the representation of secular themes in art. With the growth of cities, trade guilds were formed and artists were often required to be members of a painters' guild. As a result, because of better record keeping, more artists are known to us by name in this period than any previous; some artists were even so bold as to sign their names.
Origins
Gothic art emerged in Île-de-France, France,in the early 12th century, at the Abbey Church of St Denis built by Abbot Suger.
Thomas O'Hagan speculates on Lombard, Frankish and Norse influences feeding into Gothic.
Wilhelm Worringer's Form in the Gothic traces the psychological roots of the style back into the past at least as far as the Migration period.
History
The style rapidly spread beyond its early manifestations in architecture to sculpture, to textile art, and to painting, which took a variety of forms, including fresco, stained glass, the illuminated manuscript, and panel painting. Monastic orders, especially the Cistercians and the Carthusians, commissioned many important ecclesiastical buildings, disseminating the style and developing distinctive variants of it across Europe. Regional variations of architecture remained important, even when, by the late-14th century, a coherent universal style which Louis Courajod dubbed "International Gothic" had evolved, which continued until the late-15th century.Although artists of the Gothic period produced far more secular works than are often known today, generally the survival rate of religious art has been better than for secular equivalents, and a large proportion of the art from the period was religious, whether commissioned by the church or by the laity.
Gothic art was often typological in nature, reflecting a belief that the events of the Old Testament pre-figured those of the New, and that this was indeed their main significance. Old and New Testament scenes appeared side-by-side in works like the Speculum Humanae Salvationis of the early-14th century, and in the decoration of churches. The Gothic period coincided with a great resurgence in Marian devotion, in which the visual arts played a major part. Images of the Virgin Mary developed from the Byzantine hieratic types, through the Coronation of the Virgin, to more human and intimate types, and cycles of the Life of the Virgin were very popular. Artists like Giotto, Fra Angelico and Pietro Lorenzetti in Italy, and Early Netherlandish painting, all brought realism and more natural humanity to art. Western European artists, and their patrons, became much more confident in innovative iconography, and much more originality developed, although most artists still followed copied formulae.
Iconography was affected by changes in theology, with depictions of the Assumption of Mary gaining ground on the older Death of the Virgin theme, and in devotional practices such as the Devotio Moderna, which produced new treatments of Christ in subjects such as the Man of Sorrows, Pensive Christ and Pietà, which emphasised his human suffering and vulnerability, in a parallel movement to that in depictions of the Virgin. Even in Last Judgements Christ was now usually shown exposing his chest to show the wounds of his Passion. Saints appeared more frequently, and altarpieces showed saints relevant to the particular church or donor in attendance on a Crucifixion or on an enthroned Virgin and Child, or occupying the central space themselves. During the Gothic period many ancient iconographical features that originated in New Testament apocrypha like the midwives at the Nativity were gradually eliminated under clerical pressure, though others had become too well-established, and were considered harmless.
Etymology
The word "Gothic" for art was initially used as a synonym for "Barbaric", and was therefore used pejoratively. Its critics saw this type of Medieval art as unrefined and too remote from the aesthetic proportions and shapes of Classical art. Renaissance authors believed that the Sack of Rome by the Gothic tribes in 410 had triggered the demise of the Classical world and all the values they held dear. In the 15th century, various Italian architects and writers complained that the new "barbarian" styles filtering down from north of the Alps posed a similar threat to the classical revival promoted by the early Renaissance.The "Gothic" qualifier for this art movement was first used in Raphael's letter to Pope Leo X and was subsequently popularised by the Italian artist and writer Giorgio Vasari, who used it as early as 1530, calling Gothic art a "monstrous and barbarous" "disorder". Raphael claimed that the pointed arches of northern architecture were an echo of the primitive huts the Germanic forest dwellers formed by bending trees together – a myth which would resurface much later in a more positive sense in the writings of the German Romantic movement. "Gothic art" was strongly criticised by French authors such as Boileau, La Bruyère, Rousseau, before becoming a recognised form of art, and the wording becoming fixed. Molière would famously comment on Gothic:
The besotted taste of Gothic monuments,
These odious monsters of ignorant centuries,
Which the torrents of barbary spewed forth.
In its beginning, Gothic art was initially called "French work", thus attesting to the priority of France in the creation of this style.
Painting
Painting in the Gothic style did not exist until around 1200, over 50 years after the beginnings of Gothic architecture and sculpture. The transition from Romanesque to Gothic is very imprecise and not at all a clear break, and Gothic ornamental detailing is often introduced before much change is seen in the style of figures or compositions themselves. Then figures become more animated in pose and facial expression, tend to be smaller in relation to the background of scenes, and are arranged more freely in the pictorial space, where there is room. This transition occurs first in England and France around 1200, in Germany around 1220 and Italy around 1300. Painting during the Gothic period was practiced in four primary media: frescos, panel paintings, manuscript illumination and stained glass.Frescos
Frescos continued to be used as the main pictorial narrative craft on church walls in southern Europe as a continuation of early Christian and Romanesque traditions. An accident of survival has given Denmark and Sweden the largest groups of surviving church wall paintings in the Biblia pauperum style, usually extending up to recently constructed cross vaults. In both Denmark and Sweden, they were almost all covered with limewash after the Reformation which has preserved them, but some have also remained untouched since their creation. Among the finest examples from Denmark are those of the Elmelunde Master from the Danish island of Møn who decorated the churches of Fanefjord, Keldby and Elmelunde. Albertus Pictor is arguably the most well-known fresco artist from the period working in Sweden. Examples of Swedish churches with well-preserved frescos include Tensta, Gökhem and Anga churches.Stained glass
In northern Europe, stained glass was an important and prestigious form of painting until the 15th century, when it became supplanted by panel painting. Gothic architecture greatly increased the amount of glass in large buildings, partly to allow for wide expanses of glass, as in rose windows. In the early part of the period mainly black paint and clear or brightly coloured glass was used, but in the early 14th century the use of compounds of silver, painted on glass which was then fired, allowed a number of variations of colour, centred on yellows, to be used with clear glass in a single piece. By the end of the period designs increasingly used large pieces of glass which were painted, with yellows as the dominant colours, and relatively few smaller pieces of glass in other colours.Manuscripts and printmaking
Illuminated manuscripts represent the most complete record of Gothic painting, providing a record of styles in places where no monumental works have otherwise survived. The earliest full manuscripts with French Gothic illustrations date to the middle of the 13th century. Many such illuminated manuscripts were royal bibles, although psalters also included illustrations; the Parisian Psalter of Saint Louis, dating from 1253 to 1270, features 78 full-page illuminations in tempera paint and gold leaf.During the late 13th century, scribes began to create prayer books for the laity, often known as books of hours due to their use at prescribed times of the day. Among the earliest is an example by William de Brailes that seems to have been written for an unknown laywoman living in a small village near Oxford in about 1240. Nobility frequently purchased such texts, paying handsomely for decorative illustrations; among the most well-known creators of these is Jean Pucelle, whose Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux was commissioned by King Charles IV as a gift for his queen, Jeanne d'Évreux. Elements of the French Gothic present in such works include the use of decorative page framing reminiscent of the architecture of the time with elongated and detailed figures. The use of spatial indicators such as building elements and natural features such as trees and clouds also denote the French Gothic style of illumination.
From the middle of the 14th century, blockbooks with both text and images cut as woodcut seem to have been affordable by parish priests in the Low Countries, where they were most popular. By the end of the century, printed books with illustrations, still mostly on religious subjects, were rapidly becoming accessible to the prosperous middle class, as were engravings of fairly high quality by printmakers like Israhel van Meckenem and Master E. S. In the 15th century, the introduction of cheap prints, mostly in woodcut, made it possible even for peasants to have devotional images at home. These images, tiny at the bottom of the market, often crudely coloured, were sold in thousands but are now extremely rare, most having been pasted to walls.