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Gothic architecture
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture which flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture.
Originating in 12th-century France and lasting into the 16th century, Gothic architecture was known during the period as "the French Style" (Opus Francigenum), with the term Gothic first appearing during the latter part of the Renaissance. Its characteristic features include the pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the flying buttress.
Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals, abbeys and parish churches of Europe. It is also the architecture of many castles, palaces, town halls, guild halls, universities, and to a less prominent extent, private dwellings.
It is in the great churches and cathedrals and in a number of civic buildings that the Gothic style was expressed most powerfully, its characteristics lending themselves to appeal to the emotions. A great number of ecclesiastical buildings remain from this period, of which even the smallest are often structures of architectural distinction while many of the larger churches are considered priceless works of art and are listed with UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. For this reason a study of Gothic architecture is largely a study of cathedrals and churches.
A series of Gothic revivals began in mid-18th century England, spread through 19th-century Europe and continued, largely for ecclesiastical and university structures, into the 20th century.
The term "Gothic"
The term "Gothic", when applied to architecture, has nothing to do with the historical Goths. It was a pejorative term that came to be used as early as the 1530s by Giorgio Vasari to describe culture that was considered rude and barbaric.[1] At the time in which Vasari was writing, Italy had experienced a century of building in the Classical architectural vocabulary revived in the Renaissance and seen as the finite evidence of a new Golden Age of learning and refinement.
The Renaissance had then overtaken Europe, overturning a system of culture that, prior to the advent of printing, was almost entirely focused on the Church and was perceived, in retrospect, as a period of ignorance and superstition. Hence, François Rabelais, also of the 16th century, imagines an inscription over the door of his Utopian Abbey of Thélème, "Here enter no hypocrites, bigots..." slipping in a slighting reference to "Gotz" and "Ostrogotz."[2]
In English 17th-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 from before the revival of classical types of architecture.
According to a 19th-century correspondent in the London Journal Notes and Queries:
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.[3][4]
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."[5]
Influences
Regional
At the end of the 12th century Europe was divided into a multitude of city states and kingdoms. The area encompassing modern Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, eastern France and much of northern Italy, excluding Venice, was nominally part of the Holy Roman Empire, but local rulers exercised considerable autonomy. France, Scotland, Spain and Sicily were independent kingdoms, as was England, whose Plantagenet kings ruled large domains in France.[6] Norway came under the influence of England, while the other Scandinavian countries and Poland were influenced by Germany. Angevin kings brought the Gothic tradition from France to Southern Italy .
Throughout Europe at this time there was a rapid growth in trade and an associated growth in towns.[7][8] Germany and the Lowlands had large flourishing towns that grew in comparative peace, in trade and competition with each other, or united for mutual weal, as in the Hanseatic League. Civic building was of great importance to these towns as a sign of wealth and pride. England and France remained largely feudal and produced grand domestic architecture for their dukes, rather than grand town halls for their burghers.
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Materials
A further regional influence was the availability of materials. In France, limestone was readily available in several grades, the very fine white limestone of Caen being favoured for sculptural decoration. England had coarse limestone and red sandstone as well as dark green Purbeck marble which was often used for architectural features.
In Northern Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Baltic countries and northern Poland local building stone was unavailable but there was a strong tradition of building in brick. The resultant style, Brick Gothic, is called "Backsteingotik" in Germany and Scandinavia and is associated with the Hanseatic League.
In Italy, stone was used for fortifications, but brick was preferred for other buildings. Because of the extensive and varied deposits of marble, many buildings were faced in marble, or were left with undecorated façade so that this might be achieved at a later date.
The availability of timber also influenced the style of architecture. It is thought that the magnificent hammer-beam roofs of England were devised as a direct response to the lack of long straight seasoned timber by the end of the Medieval period, when forests had been decimated not only for the construction of vast roofs but also for ship building.[7][9]
Religious
The early Medieval periods had seen a rapid growth in monasticism, with several different orders being prevalent and spreading their influence widely. Foremost were the Benedictines whose great abbey churches vastly outnumbered any others in England. A part of their influence was that they tended to build within towns, unlike the Cistercians whose ruined abbeys are seen in the remote countryside. The Cluniac and Cistercian Orders were prevalent in France, the great monastery at Cluny having established a formula for a well planned monastic site which was then to influence all subsequent monastic building for many centuries.
In the 13th century St. Francis of Assisi established the Franciscans, or so-called "Grey Friars", a mendicant order. Its off-shoot, the Dominicans, founded by St. Dominic in Toulouse and Bologna, were particularly influential in the building of Italy's Gothic churches.[7][8]
Architectural
Gothic architecture grew out of the previous architectural genre, Romanesque. For the most part, there was not a clean break, as there was later to be in Renaissance Florence with the sudden revival of the Classical style by Brunelleschi in the early 15th century.
Romanesque tradition
Romanesque architecture, or Norman architecture as it is generally termed in England because of its association with the Norman invasion, had already established the basic architectural forms and units that were to remain in slow evolution throughout the Medieval period. The basic structure of the cathedral church, the parish church, the monastery, the castle, the palace, the great hall and the gatehouse were all established. Ribbed vaults, buttresses, clustered columns, ambulatories, wheel windows, spires and richly carved door tympanums were already features of ecclesiastical architecture.[10]
The widespread introduction of a single feature was to bring about the stylistic change that separates Gothic from Romanesque, and broke the tradition of massive masonry and solid walls penetrated by small openings, replacing it with a style where light appears to triumph over substance. The feature that brought the change is the pointed arch. With its use came the development of many other architectural devices, previously put to the test in scattered buildings and then called into service to meet the structural, aesthetic and ideological needs of the new style. These include the flying buttresses, pinnacles and traceried windows which typify Gothic ecclesiastical architecture.[7]
Possible Eastern influence
While so-called 'pitched' brick vaulting, which could be constructed without centering, may date back in the Ancient Near East to the 2nd millennium BC,[11] the earliest evidence of the pointed masonry arch appears in late Roman and Sassanian architecture, mostly evidenced in early church building in Syria and Mesopotamia, but occasionally also in secular structures like the Karamagara Bridge.[12] After the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, it became gradually a standard feature of Islamic architecture.[7]