Gothic ArchitectureThe term Gothic was first used during the later Renaissance, and as a term of contempt. Says Vasari, "Then arose new architects who after the manner of their barbarous nations erected buildings in that style which we call Gothic", while Evelyn but expresses the mental attitude of his own time when he writes, "The ancient Greek and Roman architecture answered all the perfections required in a faultless and accomplished building" -- but the Goths and Vandals destroyed these and "introduced in their stead a certain fantastical and licentious manner of building: congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy, monkish piles, without any just proportion, use or beauty." For the first time, an attempt was made to destroy an instinctive and, so far as Europe was concerned, an almost universal form of art, and to substitute in its place another built up by artificial rules and premeditated theories; it was necessary, therefore, that the ground should be cleared of a once luxuriant growth that still showed signs of vitality, and to effect this the schools of Vignola, Palladio, and Wren were compelled to throw scorn on the art they were determined to discredit.
As ignorant of the true habitat of
the style as they were of its nature, the Italians of the
Renaissance called it the "maniera Tedesca", and since to
them the word Goth implied the perfection of barbarism, it
is but natural that they should have applied it to a style
they desired to destroy. The style ceased, for the
particular type of civilization it expressed had come to an
end; but the name remained, and when, early in the
nineteenth century, the beginnings of a new epoch brought
new apologists, the old title was taken over as the only one
available, and since then constant efforts have been made to
define it more exactly, to give it a new significance, or to
substitute in its place a term more expressive of the idea
to be conveyed.
But little success has followed any of the attempts at
definition. The effort has produced such varying results as
the epithets of Vasari and Evelyn, the nebulous or
sentimental paraphrases of the early nineteenth century
romanticists, the narrow archeological definitions of De
Caumont, and the rigid formalities of the more learned
logicians and structural specialists, such as MM. Viollet le
Duc, Anthyme St-Paul, and Enlart, and Professor Moore. The
only scientific attempt is that of which the first was the
originator, the last the most scholarly and exact exponent.
Concisely stated, the contention of this school is that
It is thus a system of
balanced thrusts in contradistinction to the ancient system
of inert stability. Gothic architecture is such a system
carried out in a finely artistic spirit (Charles H. Moore,
"Development and Character of Gothic Architecture", I, 8).
The result is that all the medieval architects
of Western Europe, with the exception of that produced
during the space of a century and a half, and chiefly within
the limits of the old Royal Domain of France, is denied the
title of Gothic. Of the whole body of English architecture
produced between 1066 and 1528 it is said, "The English
claim to any share in the original development of Gothic, or
to the consideration of the pointed architecture of the
Island as properly Gothic at all, must be abandoned" (Moore,
op. cit., Preface to first ed., 8), and the same is said of
the contemporary architecture of Germany, Italy, and Spain.
Logically applied this rule would exclude also all the
timber-roofed churches and the civil and military structures
erected in France contemporaneously with the cathedrals and
(though this point is not pressed) even the west fronts of
such admittedly Gothic edifices as the cathedrals of Paris,
Amiens, and Reims. As one commentator on Gothic architecture
has said, "A definition so restricted carries with it its
own condemnations" (Francis Bond, "Gothic Architecture in
England", I, 10).
It may be said of Gothic architecture that it is an impulse
and a tendency rather than a perfectly rounded
accomplishment; aesthetically, it never achieved perfection
in any given monument, or group of monuments, nor were its
possibilities ever fully worked out except in the category
of structural science. Here alone, finality was achieved by
the cathedral-builders of the Ile-de-France, but this fact
cannot give to their work exclusive claim to the name of
Gothic. The art of any given time is the expression of
certain racial qualifications modified by inheritance,
tradition, and environment, and working themselves out under
the control of religious and secular impulses. When these
elements are sound and vital, combined in the right
proportions, and operating for a sufficient length of time,
the result is a definite style in some one or more of the
arts. Such a style is Gothic architecture, and it is to this
style, regarded in its most inclusive aspect, that the term
Gothic is applied by general consent, and in this sense the
word is used here. This form, so pregnant of structural and artistic possibilities, may have been brought from the Holy Land by returning pilgrims, or it may have been independently evolved. Whatever its source, its advantages were so great from a practical standpoint that it is hard to believe that the races that had produced Sant' Ambrogio and Jumièges should not have worked out independently the idea of the pointed arch. Its two great virtues are its slight thrust as compared with the round arch, and its infinite possibilities of variation in height. The elliptical diagonals of the Romans did not commend themselves to the builders of the North, and the doming that resulted from the uniform use of semicircular arches, while not offensive in the case of square areas, became impossible where oblong spaces were to be covered, the expedient of stilting the longitudinal arches not yet having suggested itself. With the pointed arch in use, all difficulties disappeared. Once introduced it became in a few years the universal form, and its beauty was such that it immediately won its way against the round arch for the spanning of all voids.
Almost coincidentally
with the acceptance of the pointed arch came the device of
stilting, the transverse arches of Bury (c. 1125) being so
treated. This would seem to indicate that to the Gothic
builders the value of the pointed arch lay rather in its
comparatively small thrust and in its intrinsic beauty than
in the facility with which it might be used for obtaining
level crowns in oblong vaulting areas. This stilting of the
longitudinal arches was from the beginning almost invariable
in France; structurally, it concentrated the vault thrust on
a comparatively narrow vertical line, where it could be
easily handled by the flying buttress; it permitted the
largest possible window area in the clerestory, while the
composition of lines and the delicately waved or twisted
surfaces were so beautiful in themselves that, once
discovered, they could not be abandoned by the logical and
beauty-loving Franks.
Transitional forms are found throughout the
eleventh century, and the development from such a plan as
that of St. Generou, on the one hand, or Aachen, on the
other, to St-Denis presupposes only that degree of inventive
force and overflowing vitality which, as a matter of fact,
existed during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The seed of Jumièges has developed into full fruition. The façade of Notre-Dame must rank as one of the few entirely perfect architectural accomplishments of man. With the cathedral of Paris, also, the new art shows itself in all its wonderful inclusiveness; design, as apart from constructive science, appears full flood in the entire treatment of the exterior; the Lombard rose window has been evolved to its final point; decorative detail, both in design and in placing, has become sure and perfectly competent; while sculpture, stained glass, and, we know from records, painting have all forged forward to a point at least even with the sister art of architecture. In sculpture especially the advance has been amazing. For many generations it was held that the restoration of sculpture as a fine art was due to Italy, and specifically to Niccolo Pisano, but as a matter of fact the task was accomplished in France a century before his time. The revival began in the South, where Byzantine remains were numerous and the tradition still lingered. At Clermont-Ferrand, by the end of the eleventh century, a school of competent sculptors had been developed; Toulouse and Moissac followed suit, and by 1140 the Ile-de-France was producing works which show "a grace and mastery of design, a truth and tenderness of sentiment, and a fineness and precision of chiselling that are unparalleled in any other schools save those of ancient Greece and of Italy in the fifteenth century" (Moore, op. cit., XIII, 366). The sculptures of St-Denis, of Chartres, of Senlis, and of Paris are perfect examples of sculpture beyond criticism in itself and exquisitely adapted to its architectonic function; the statue of Our Lady in the portal of the north transept of Paris may be placed for comparison side by side with the masterpieces of Hellenic sculpture and lose nothing by the test. Of stained glass enough remains here and elsewhere to show how marvellous was the wholly new art brought into being by the genius of medievalism; and that the painting and guilding of all the interior surfaces was on a scale of equal perfection, we are compelled to believe.
As the cathedrals and churches now remain to us --
much of the glass destroyed by savage iconoclasm and
brutality, every trace of colour vanished from the walls,
while the original altars themselves have been swept away
together with their gorgeous hangings and decorations
(monstrosities like that of Chartres, for instance, taking
their places); shrines, screens, and tombs, all wonderfully
wrought and glorious in colour and gold, shattered and cast
into the rubbish heap -- they can give but an inadequate
idea at best of the nature of that Christian art which in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries came as the result of a
fusion of all the arts, each one of which had been raised to
the highest point of efficiency. Of the lost colour of
Gothic art Mr. Prior says, The great abbeys and cathedrals were seldom vaulted,
being covered by timber roofs of low pitch, except as
regards their easily vaulted aisles. Barrel vaults were
occasionally used, groin vaults in innumerable cases; the
groin vault with ribs first occurs in Durham in 1093, an
astonishing date, since the earliest ribbed vault claimed
for France is in the diminutive church of Rhuis, a structure
the date of which is unknown, but is placed at about 1100.
The earliest known rib vault is claimed by Rivoira to be
that of San Flaviano, in Umbria, but there is some doubt as
to whether this is the original vault of a church known to
have been built in 1032. San Nazzaro Maggiore, at Milan, has
an authentic rib vault of 1075, and it appears therefore
that the choir vault of Durham is earlier than any certain
example in France, however small, and that it was built
within twenty years of the first dated rib vault in
Lombardy. The vaults of Durham nave are pointed and ribbed,
and are not later than 1128, six years after the pointed
arch appears in the little French church of Morienval. It was essentially a northern art, and in Italy neither the mental disposition of the people nor the spiritual and temporal conditions put a premium on ideas in themselves racially foreign. Nevertheless, once introduced, they produced in many cases very beautiful results, particularly in decoration and design, and Italian Gothic certainly contributes valuable elements to the total of medieval art. During the eleventh century one school after another had come into existence in almost every part of Italy, all based more or less on some local modification of the primitive basilican idea, yet varying in different directions as the peculiar influences of each section might direct. In Torcello, Murano, and Venice these were naturally Byzantine, more or less modified by the variations at Ravenna. In Sicily, Byzantine influence was mingled with strains from Mohammedan sources and with a strong influence brought in by King Roger and his Norman followers. Pisa and Florence worked on their own lines with some slight Lombardic admixture, while those portions of the peninsula under Lombard control developed their vital and inspiring style from the persisting Carolingian tradition. The abstract beauty much of this Italian product of the eleventh century is very pronounced, St. Mark's at Venice, San Miniato at Florence, Cefalù, Monreale, and the Capella Palatina in Sicily; Troja, Toscanella, San Michele at Pavia, San Zeno at Verona -- all possess elements of great art, but no one of the styles indicated by any of these buildings was destined to a final working-out under cultural conditions that made such a result inevitable.
Development during the
twelfth century was almost wholly local in its extent and
decorative in its scope, and it was not until the coming of
the Cistercians, with their Gothic of Burgundy, at the
opening of the thirteenth century, that the incipient or
reminiscent local modes were extinguished, and an attempt
made at a general unification of style.
These qualities are
almost wholly lacking in the churches above named, as well
as in the cathedral itself, which partakes of nearly all of
their peculiarities. We know that in England, when the
Franciscans and Dominicans built their own great, popular
churches, while they worked for the same large open spaces
and economy of material, they nevertheless regarded these
considerations of proportion and pure beauty, therefore the
conclusion seems inevitable that it is not to the nature of
the Mendicant Orders, but to some incapacity in the race, as
it then was, that we owe the radical shortcomings of the
work of Arnolfo and his fellows in Italy. The fact remains,
however, that the great churches of the friars are the chief
offenders.
The Doge's Palace and the innumerable private
structures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in the
first-named city have all the qualities of pure beauty of
design and detail, as well as the unerring sense of
proportion and relationship, that are characteristic of
Gothic art, while the forms through which these are
expressed are wholly medieval, yet with a complete racial
note that raises them almost to the dignity of a national
school of Gothic design. Until this time the Gothic spirit had hardly more than crossed the mountains and always as a direct importation from Burgundy and Aquitaine; Salamanca cathedral, St. Vincent of Avila, the cathedrals of Lérida, Tudela, and Tarragona, the Abbey of Verula, and the church of Las Huelgas at Burgos, all built between 1120 and 1180, show a very undeveloped type of early Gothic construction, combined with a rich and imaginative treatment of Southern Romanesque design in the exterior. Salamanca and St. Isidoro at Leon both possess domes or lanterns over the crossing, remarkable in point of structural ingenuity and beauty of design both internally and externally. If the scheme was borrowed from the other side of the Pyrenees, it has been wholly transformed and glorified, and this brilliant innovation, containing such possibilities of development that were never carried further, may justly be attributed to native Spanish genius. No progressive growth occurred, however, during the next fifty years, and it was not until the definitive victories of St. Ferdinand made Spanish nationality possible, and the coming of the Cistercians gave the necessary spiritual impulse, that Gothic architecture in any true sense appeared in Spain, and then as another direct importation from France rather than as a development of the latent racial qualities inherent in Salamanca.
Burgos,
Barcelona, Toledo, and Leon are closely French in their
setting-out and ordonance, but in detail they vary widely
from all French precedents. There is a southern richness and
romance both in the exterior and interior design and detail
of Burgos, for example, as well as in the other Spanish work
from the middle of the thirteenth century onward, that gives
it a certain personality quite distinct from that of any
other school of Gothic. This sumptuousness of detail and
colour, and composition of light and shade, enters into
every detail; altars and reredoses, the latter often vast in
size and of the richest materials; grilles of intricately
wrought and chiselled metal; sculptured tombs; stalls of the
most elaborate carving; great pictures, tapestries, and
statutes innumerable, together with a Flemish type of
stained glass in the most brilliant colouring, were lavished
on every church; and since Spain has escaped the pillage and
destruction of religious revolutions, much of medieval
completeness remains, though considerably overlaid with a
thick coating of Renaissance, and therefore it is only in
Spanish churches that one may obtain some idea of the
general effect of a medieval church as it once was before it
became subjected to the mishandling of revolutionists,
iconoclasts, and restorers.
Similar conditions in Italy
surrounded the culmination of the great arts of painting and
sculpture, while in England the delicate and exquisite
Perpendicular Gothic reached its highest development in the
reign of Henry VIII. Says Mr. Porter, in considering this
phenomenon: In England the sumptuous Perpendicular of the Chapel of Henry VII at Westminster hardened rapidly into the formalities of later Tudor when, and ceased wholly as a definite style when the suppression of the monasteries, the separation of the English Church from the Roman obedience and the imposition of the principles of the dogmatic Reformation of Germany on the English people brought church-building to an end. With the final submission of the English during the reign of Elizabeth to a dogmatic revolution they had not invited, but were powerless to resist, came an influx of German influence that rapidly wiped out the very tradition of Gothic, except in the case of the universities and in that of the minor domestic building, substituting in its place the most unintelligent used classical forms anywhere to be found in the history of the Renaissance. At Oxford and Cambridge the cultural tradition was strong enough to withstand for a century the complete acceptance of the new fashion, and down to the middle of the seventeenth century the elder tradition persisted in such work as St. John's, Cambridge, and Wadham, Oxford, while its compulsion was so strong as to coerce even Inigo Jones into building the fine garden front of St. John's, Oxford, in a style at least reminiscent of what had been universal two centuries before. The same instinctive impulse continued in the case of manors and farmsteads even to a later date, and to this day in certain portions of England the stone-mason, carpenter, and tile layer preserve the old rules and traditions of the craft that have been handed down from father to son for centuries. Five hundred years, since the year 1000 to the year
1500, Catholic Europe had slowly worked out its own form of
artistic expression, largely through "the most consummate
art of building which the world has achieved" (Prior,
"History of Gothic Art in England", I, 7). As paganism had
done in Greece, so, and equally, Christianity wrought in the
North. Primarily it was an art of church-building and
adornment for the Church was the one concrete and
unmistakable fact in life. "While all else was unstable and
changeful, she, with her unbroken tradition and her
uninterrupted services vindicated the principle of order and
the moral continuity of the race . . . . . . The services of
monastic and secular clergy alike, their offices of faith,
charity and labour in the field and the hovel, in the school
and the hospital as well as in the church were for
centuries, the chief witness of the spirit of human
brotherhood (Norton, "Historical Studies of Church Building
in the Middle Ages", I, 16). Therefore, on the heels of the
tenth-century triumph of the Church came the
eleventh-century passion for church-building; as says
Rudolphus, the monk of Cluny, writing in the midst of it
all, "Erat enim instar ac si mundus ipse excutiendo semet,
rejecta vetustate, passim candidam ecclesiarum vestem
indueret " (It was as if the world, shaking itself and
putting off the old things, were putting on the white robe
of churches). The old vesture was indeed cast away and the
new "white robe of churches" was of other make. The
underlying laws of the new style were identical with those
of all other great styles, the vision of beauty was no
different in any respect, the forms alone were absolutely
new. For five centuries the artistic mode of Western Europe
went on its way without a pause, one in spirit wherever it
was found.
. At its worst this re-building, re-painting re-carving
has been wanton and causeless substitution . . . . For the
next generation to us any direct acquaintance with the great
comprehensive Gothic genius, except by means of parodies,
will be difficult" (A History of Gothic Art in England, I,
3, 4). Enough remains, however, to enable us to reconstruct,
at least in imagination, an unique artistic product of
Christian civilization of which it is possible for Professor
Norton to say that "it advanced with constant increase of
power of expression, of pliability and variety of
adaptation, of beauty in design and skill in construction
until at last, in the consummate splendour of such a
cathedral as that of Our Lady of Chartres or of Amiens, it
reached a height of achievement that has never been
surpassed" (op. cit., I, 13).
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