Gothic Art
Gothic Europe
In the mid-sixteenth century, Giorgio Vasari, the “father
of art history”, used “Gothic” as a term of ridicule to
describe the late medieval art and architecture. For
him, Gothic art was “monstrous and barbarous,”
invented by the Goths. Vasari and other admirers of
Greco-Roman art believed those uncouth warriors were
responsible not only for Rome’s downfall, but also the
destruction of the classical style in art and architecture.
The Gothic period was a time not only of great
prosperity, but also turmoil in Europe. In 1337, the
Hundred Years’ War began, shattering the peace
between France and England.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, contemporary
commentators on the Gothic buildings considered them
to be “opus modernum” or modern work. They viewed
these towering cathedrals as an exciting and new
decoration style. They regarded their new buildings not
as deviations from the classical style, but rather images
of the City of God.
From 1378-1417, opposing popes resided in Rome and
in Avignon in southern France during the politicalreligious crisis known as the Great Schism.
The Gothic style first appeared around France in 1140.
In southern France and elsewhere in Europe, the
Romanesque style still flourished.
Although it became an internationally acclaimed style,
Gothic art was, nonetheless, a regional phenomenon.
To the east and south of Europe, the Islamic and
Byzantine styles still held sway.
In the fourteenth century, a great plague, the Black
Death, swept over western Europe and killed at least a
quarter of its people.
Above all, the Gothic age was a time of profound
change in European society. The centers of both
intellectual and religious life shifted definitively from
monasteries to cities.
In these urban areas, prosperous merchants made their
homes, universities run by professional guilds of
scholars formed, minstrels sang of chivalrous knights
and beautiful maidens at royal “courts of love”, and
bishops erected great new cathedrals reaching to the
sky.
Gothic Art
Gothic Art: Structure of the Architecture
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Gothic Art: The Age of Great Cathedrals
Ambulatory and radiating chapels
Saint-Denis, France 1140-1144
Early Gothic
St. Denis was the apostle who brought
Christianity to Gaul and who died a martyr’s
death there in the third century.
This church, just a few miles north of Paris,
housed the saint’s tomb and those of the
French kings, as well as the crimson military
banner said to have belonged to Charlemagne.
This church was in disrepair and was much too
small to accommodate the growing numbers of
pilgrims. The abbot (The superior of a monastery.)
Suger believed this building to be of insufficient
grandeur to serve as the official church of the
French kings, so he began to rebuild the
church in 1135 by erecting a new west facade
with sculptured portals.
Work on the east end of the church began in
1140. Suger died before he could remodel the
nave but he was present for the choir
dedication in 1144.
The choir of 1140-1144 is considered the
birthplace of Gothic architecture.
Figure 18--1
Gothic Art
Vaults of the ambulatory and radiating chapels of the choir
Birth of Gothic ArchitectureFigure 18--3
St. Denis, France, 1140-1144
Innovative rib vaults, rested upon
pointed arches, cover the ambulatory
and chapels. These pioneering ,
exceptionally light, vaults spring from
the slender columns in the ambulatory
and form the thin masonry walls
framing the chapels.
Because of the vault’s lightness, the
walls between the chapels were
eliminated and the outer walls were
opened up and filled with the colored
light from stained-glass windows.
(read page 500 for information about stained
glass)
The architects and visionaries behind
this new type of design marveled at the
“wonderful and uninterrupted light” that
poured in through the “most sacred
windows”.
Suger called the colored light “lux nova “new light”. The poly
chrome rays coming through the windows shine on the walls and
columns, almost dissolving them.
The combination of the new type of vaulting and the use of
stained glass became the hallmarks of the French Gothic style.
CEZANNE
DISCUSSION
Analyze the difference
between what you see
here, and the Cathedral
of St. Sernin in
Toulouse. Be detailed in
your description and be
prepared to share your
comments with the
class.
[ 5 minutes ]
Gothic Art
Royal Portals Filled With Sculpture
This Cathedral is known as Notre Dame
(”Our Lady”, that is, the Virgin Mary) at
Chartres
This image depicts the “royal portal”, so
named because of the sculptural
depictions of the royal family flanking the
doorways.
The west portal of the cathedral (seen
here) constitutes one of the most complete
and impressive surviving ensembles of
Early Gothic sculpture.
The cathedral was destroyed by fire in
1194, and the reconstruction began
immediately in the High Gothic style.
Many art historians consider the “new”
Chartres Cathedral to be the first High
gothic building---- the first to have been
planned from the beginning with flying
buttresses.
Figure 18--4
Aerial view of Chartres Cathedral
Chartres, France ca 1134
Gothic Art
Royal Portals Filled with Sculpture
Royal Portal, west facade, Chartres Cathedral
Chartres, France ca 1145-1155
These sculptures of the west facade
proclaim the majesty and power of Christ.
To unite the three doorways iconographical
and visually, the sculptors carved episodes
form Christ’s life on the capitals, which form
a kind of frieze linking one entrance to the
next.
On the right portal tympanum, Christ
appears in the lap of his Virgin Mother ,
while scenes of his birth and early life fill the
lintel below.
The tympanum’s theme
and composition recall
Byzantine
representations of the
Theotokos (”bearer of
God” in Greek)
This is an example of a
Byzantine creation
depicting the
Theotokos.
Mary’s prominence on the Chartres facade has no parallel in the
decoration of Romanesque church portals. At Chartres the designers gave
her a central role in the sculptural program, a position she maintained
throughout the Gothic period.
The cult of the Virgin Mary reached a high point during the Gothic Age.
Figure 18--5
Gothic Art
The Early Gothic Statue-Column
The theme of the central tympanum of the cathedral is The
Second Coming. The signs of the Four Evangelists, the
Twenty Four Elders of the Apocalypse, and the Twelve
Apostles appear around Christ or on the lintel.
The Last Judgment theme was still of central importance, as
it was in Romanesque portals. But at Early Gothic Chartes,
the theme became a symbol of salvation rather than
damnation.
These images of Old Testament Kings and Queens
decorate the jambs flanking each doorway of the Royal
Portal. They are royal ancestors of Christ and, both
figuratively and literally, support the New Testament figures
above the doorways.
The figures stand rigidly upright with their elbows held close
against their hips. The linear folds of their garments------Romanesque style’s heritage, along with the elongated
proportions-------- generally echo the vertical lines of the
columns behind them.
Note the difference between these jamb figures and the
caryatids of the classical age. The caryatids replaced the
columns, whereas the jamb figures are attached to the
Figure 18--6
columns.
Old Testament queen and two kings,
from the Royal Portal at Chartres Cathedral
Chartres, France ca 1145-1155
Gothic Art
Architecture
Nave elevations of four French Gothic Cathedrals at the same
scale.
Gothic Art
A New Cathedral Rises in Paris
Notre-Dame
Paris, France ca 1180-1200
About 1130, Louis VI moved his official
residence to Paris, spurring much
commercial activity and a great building
boom. Paris soon became the leading
city of France, indeed all of northern
Europe, making a new cathedral a
necessity.
Notre-Dame of Paris occupies a
picturesque site on an island in the
Seine River called the Île-de-la-Cité
(island of the city).
This cathedral has a complicated history,
as the choir and transept were
completed by 1182; the nave, by 1225;
and the facade not until ca.1250-1260.
Paris became the Intellectual capital of
Gothic Europe when Philip II made his
residence there. As a result, the art and
architecture reflected the Scholasticism
of systematic design and procedure.
Both the art and the Scholasticism
sought stable, coherent, consistent, and
structurally intelligible solutions.
In order to hold the thinner, taller walls of Notre-Dame in place, the
unknown architect introduced flying buttresses, exterior arches that
spring from the lower roofs over the aisles and ambulatory and counter
outward thrust of the nave vaults. These flying buttresses are important
elements contributing to the distinctive “look” of Gothic cathedrals.
Figure 18--11
Early Gothic Art
The Virgin’s Beautiful Window
Figure 18--14
This cathedral was destroyed by fire in 1194, and this is the
only window from the original Chartres Cathedral that the
builders reused when the structure was rebuilt.
The French call this window “Notre Dame de la Belle
Verrière” (Our Lady of the Beautiful Window)
The framing angels seen against blue ground were added
when the window was reinstalled in the thirteenth-century
choir.
The artist represented Mary as the beautiful, young, rather
worldly, Queen of Heaven, haloed, crowned, and
accompanied by the Holy Spirt dove.
Comparing this Virgin and Child with the Theotokos and
Child of Hagia Sophia highlights not only the Byzantine
image’s greater severity and aloofness but also the sharp
difference between the light-reflecting mosaic medium and
the Gothic light-transmitting stained glass.
Byzantine and Gothic architects used light to transform the
material world into the spiritual, but in opposite ways. In
Gothic architecture, light was transmitted through a kind of
diffracting screen of stone-set glass. In Byzantine
architecture, light was reflected from myriad glass tesserae
set into the thick masonry wall.
Virgin and Child with Angels
Chartres, France ca 1170
High Gothic Art
A Queen’s Gift to Chartres
Chartres’s thirteenth-century Gothic windows are even
more spectacular than the Belle Verriere because they
were designed from the outset to fill the entire walls,
thanks to the introduction of flying buttresses.
The immense rose window and lancets of Chartres
Cathedral’s north transept were the gift of the Queen of
France, Blanche of Castile, around 1220. (The royal
motifs of yellow castles on a red ground and yellow
fleurs-de-lis- -three petaled iris flowers-- on a blue
ground fill the small lancets in the rose window’s lower
spandrels.
Mary appears in the roundel at the center of the rose,
which resembles a gem-studded book cover or cloisonné
brooch. Below, in the lancets, are Saint Anne and four
Old Testament prophets, supporting the New Testament
figures above, as on the Royal Portal.
The rose lancets change in hue and intensity with the
hours, turning solid architecture into a floating vision of
the celestial heavens.
That this vast, complex fabric of stone-set glass has
maintained its structural integrity for almost eight
hundred years attests to the Gothic builders’ engineering
Figure 18--15
Rose window and lancets, north transept
Chartres, France ca 1220
Van Gogh
DISCUSSION
How is the emotional impact of
this work different from that of
the Royal Portal of this cathedral?
Site specific details with your
partner to back up your response.
[ 5 minutes ]
High Gothic Art
Another “Classical Revolution”
Figure 18--16
Saints Martin, Jerome, and Gregory, jamb statues
From the South Transcept
Chartres, France ca 1220-1230
The sculptures adorning the portals of the two new transepts erected
after the fire of 1194 are prime examples of the “High Gothic” spirit.
Here, the jamb figures are almost independent from the architectural
framework.
These three figures from the porch of the Confessors in the south
transept reveal the great changes Gothic sculpture underwent since the
Royal Portal statues of the mid-twelfth century.
These changes recall in many ways the revolutionary developments in
ancient Greek sculpture during the transition from the Archaic to the
Classical style.
The saints communicate quietly with one another, like waiting
dignitaries. They turn slightly toward and away from each other,
breaking the rigid vertical lines that, on the Royal Portal, fix the figures
immovably. The drapery folds are not stiff and shallow vertical accents,
as on the west facade. The fabric falls and laps over the bodies in soft
folds.
Saint Martin is a tall, intense priest with gaunt features. Saint Jerome
appears as kindly, practically administrator-scholar, holding his copy of
the Scriptures. At the right, the introspective Saint Gregory seems lost
in thought as he listens to the Holy Ghost dove on his shoulder.
The sculptor did not contrast the three men simply in terms of their
poses, gestures and attributes but, most particularly and emphatically,
Gothic Art
The Quest for Height at Amiens
Chartres Cathedral was one of the most influential buildings in
the history of architecture. Its builders set a pattern that many
of the Gothic architects followed, even if they refined the
details. The construction of the cathedral at Amiens began in
1220, while work was still in progress at Chartres
Here at Amiens, the concept of a self-sustaining skeletal
architecture reached full maturity. What remained as walls was
stretched like a skin between the piers and seemed to serve
no purpose other than to provide a weather screen for the
interior.
With their new skeletal frames of stone, French builders
attempted goals almost beyond limit, pushing with even more
slender supports to new heights.
The nave vaults at Amiens stretched to heights of 140 feet.
The light flooding in from the clerestory makes the vaults
seem even more insubstantial. The effect recalls another
great building, one utterly different from Amiens but where light
also plays a defining role: Hagia Sophia in Constantinople
If Hagia Sophia is the perfect expression of Byzantine
spirituality in architecture, Amiens, with its soaring vaults and
giant windows admitting divine colored light, is its GothicFigure 18--19
Counterpart.
Nave of Amiens Cathedral
Amiens, France ca 1220
Gothic Art
Glass Replaces Stone
Construction of Reims Cathedral began only a few years after
work commenced at Amiens. The Reims designers carried the
High Gothic style of Amiens’ west facade still further, both
architecturally and sculpturally.
The kings’ gallery of statues at Reims is above the great rose
window, and the figures stand in taller and more ornate frames.
In fact, the architect “stretched’ every detail of the facade.
The openings in the towers to the left and right of the rose
window are taller, narrower, more intricately decorated, and
they more closely resemble the elegant lancets of the
clerestory within.
A pointed arch also frames the rose window itself, and the
pinnacles over the portals are taller and more elaborate than
those at Amiens.
Most striking, however is the architect’s treatment of the
tympanums over the doorways, replacing the stone relief
sculpture of earlier facades with stained-glass windows.
The contrast with Romanesque heavy masonry construction is
extreme But the rapid transforming of the Gothic facade since
the twelfth-century designs of Saint-Denis and Chartres and
even Laon is no less noteworthy.
Figure 18--23
West facade of Reims Cathedral,
Reims, France ca 1225-1290
CEZANNE
DISCUSSION
If you were required to make a
visual analogy between these
sculptural jamb figures and the
work we have already studied,
what specific works might you
use in your comparison?
Be able to explain the reasons for
your choices
[ 5 minutes ]
Gothic Art
Statues Begin to Converse
Visitation, jamb statues of central doorway
Reims, France ca 1230
At Reims the fully ripened High Gothic style also can be seen
in sculpture. At first glance, the jamb statues of the west
portals of Reims Cathedral appear to be completely detached
from their architectural background
**Compare the Reims statue-columns with those of the Royal
Portal of Chartes, where the background columns occupy a
volume equal to the figures’ volume.**
The two Reims jamb statues illustrated to the right portray
Saint Elizabeth visiting Virgin Mary before the birth of Jesus.
They are two of a series of statues celebrating Mary’s life and
are further testimony to the Virgin’s central role in Gothic
iconography.
The sculptor of the Visitation group reveals a classicizing bent
startlingly unlike anything seen since Roman times. The artist
probably studied actual classical statuary in France.
The Reims master even incorporated the Greek contrapposto
posture. The hips sway, and the legs bend as the knees
press through the rippling folds of the garments. The sculptor
also set the figures’ arms in motion.
Not only do Mary and Elizabeth turn their faces toward each
other, but they converse through gestures.
Figure 18--24
Gothic Art
A Radiant Royal Chapel
Interior of the Upper Chapel
Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, France ca 1243-1248
If the stained-glass windows inserted into the portal tympanums of
Reims Cathedral exemplify the wall-dissolving High Gothic
architectural style, Sainte-Chapelle in Paris shows this principle
applied to a whole building.
Louis IX built Sainte-Chapelle, joined to the royal palace, as at
repository for the crown of thorns and other relics of Christ’s Passion
he had purchased in 1239 from his cousin Baldwin II, the Latin
emperor of Constantinople.
The structure is a prime example of the so-called Rayonnant (radiant)
style of the High Gothic age, which dominated the Parisian court of
Saint Louis. In Sainte-Chapelle, the dissolution of walls and the
reduction of the bulk of the supports were carried to the point that
some six thousand four hundred fifty square feet of stained glass
make up more than three-quarters of the structure.
The emphasis is on the extreme slenderness of the architectural
forms and on the linearity in general. Although the chapel was
heavily restored during the nineteenth century (after damage from the
French Revolution), it has retained most of its original thirteenthcentury stained glass.
Sainte-Chapelle’s enormous windows filter the light and fill the interior
with an unearthly rose-violet atmosphere. Approximately forty-nine
Figure 18--26
feet high and fifteen feet wide, they were the largest designed up to
Gothic Art
The Virgin as Queen
Virgin and Child (Virgin of Paris), Notre Dame
Paris, France, early fourteenth century
The elegance and delicacy displayed in Sainte-Chapelle’s design permeated
the pictorial arts as well as its architecture. By the early fourteenth century, a
mannered elegance that marks Late Gothic art in general had replaced the
monumental and solemn sculptural style of the High Gothic portals.
Perhaps the best example of the late French court style in sculpture is the
statue nicknamed the “Virgin of Paris” because of its location in the Parisian
cathedral of Notre-Dame.
The sculptor portrayed Mary as a very worldly queen, decked out in royal
garments and wearing a heavy gem-encrusted crown. The Christ Child is
equally richly attired and is very much the infant prince in the arms of his young
mother.
Tender anecdotal characterization of Mother and son represents a further
humanization of the portrayal of religious figures in Gothic sculpture.
** The playful interaction of an adult and an infant in the “Virgin of Paris” may
be compared with the similarly composed statuary group of Hermes and the
infant Dionysos by the Greek sculptor Praxiteles.**
The Gothic curve was an artificial form imposed on figures, a decorative device
that produced figure structure. The body is lost behind the heavy drapery,
which, deeply cut and hollowed, almost denies the figure a solid existence. The
ornamental line the sculptor created with the flexible fabric is analogous to the
complex, restless tracery of the Late Gothic style in architecture, which
Figure 18--27
dominated northern Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Gothic Art
“Fan Vaults” in a King’s Chapel
The decorative and structure-disguising qualities of the
Perpendicular Style became even more pronounced in its
late phases. This is a prime example of such pronounced
style.
In this chapel, the earlier linear play of ribs became a kind of
architectural embroidery, pulled into uniquely English “fan
vault” shapes with large hanging pendants resembling
stalactites.
The vault looks like something organic that is hardening in
the process of melting. Intricate tracery recalling lace
overwhelms the cones hanging from the ceiling.
The chapel represents the dissolution of structural Gothic
into decorative fancy. The architect released the Gothic
style’s original lines from their function and multiplied them
into uninhibited architectural virtuosity and theatrics.
The Perpendicular Style in this structure well expresses the
precious, even dainty, lifestyle codified in the dying etiquette
of chivalry at the end of the Middle Ages.
A Contemporaneous phenomenon in France was the
Flamboyant Style seen in Churches such as Saint-Maclou
Figureat
18--43
Rouen.
Chapel of Henry VII, Westminster Abbey
London, England ca 1503-1519
Gothic Art
Equestrian Statuary Revived
Equestrian Portrait (Bamberg Rider)
Bamberg Cathedral, Germany ca 1235-1240
For centuries this statue has been mounted against a pier in Bamberg
Cathedral beneath an architectural canopy that frames the rider’s body
but not his horse. Scholars debate whether or not the statue was
made for this location or moved there, perhaps from the church’s
exterior.
This statue should recall the imagery found in the statue of Marcus
Aurelius from Rome and the statue of Charlemagne of the Carolingian
Empire.
Some believe this sculpture to represent a german emperor, perhaps
Frederick II (r. 1220-1250), who was a benefactor of Bamberg
Cathedral. The many other identifications include Saint George and
one of the three magi, but a historical personality is most likely the
subject.
The presence of a Holy Roman Emperor in the cathedral would have
underscored the unity of church and state thirteenth-century Germany.
The artist carefully described the rider’s costume, the high saddle, and
the horse’s trappings. The proportions of horse and rider are correct,
although the sculptor did not quite understand the animals anatomy, so
its shape is rather stiffly schematic.
The rider turns toward the observer, as if presiding at a review of
troops. The stirring and turning of the figure seem to reflect the Figure
same18--52
Gothic Art
Grieving for an Emaciated Christ
The widespread troubles of the fourteenth-century....... war,
famine, and social strife...... brought on an ever more acute
awareness of suffering. This found its way readily into
religious art. The Dance of Death, Christ as the Man of
Sorrow, and the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary became
favorite themes.
A fevered and fearful piety sought comfort and reassurance
in the reflection that Christ and the Virgin Mother shared
humanity’s woes. To represent this, artists emphasized the
traits of human suffering in powerful, expressive
exaggeration.
Here, the sculptor portrayed Christ as a stunted, distorted
human wreck, stiffened in death and covered with streams of
blood gushing from a huge wound.
The Virgin Mother, who cradles him like a child in her lap, is
the very image of maternal anguish, her oversized face
twisted in an expression of unbearable grief.
This statue expresses nothing of the serenity of
Romanesque and earlier Gothic depictions of Mary. Nor
does it have anything in common with the aloof, iconic
Figure 18--53
images of the Theotokos with the infant Jesus in her lap
Virgin with the Dead Christ (Röttgen Pietà)
Rhineland, Germany ca 1300-1325
Gothic Art
Virgin with the Dead Christ (Röttgen Pietà)
Rhineland, Germany ca 1300-1325
Grieving for an Emaciated Christ
Here the artist forcefully confronts the devout with an
appalling icon of agony, death, and sorrow that humanizes,
tho the point of heresy, the sacred personages. The work
calls out to the horrified believer, “ What is your suffering
compared to this?”
The humanization of religious themes and religious images
accelerated steadily from the twelfth century. By the
fourteenth century, art addressed the private person (often
in a private place) in a direct appeal to the emotions.
As the figures of the church portals began to “move” on their
columns, then within their niches, and the became feestanding, their details became more outwardly related to the
human audience as expressions of recognizable human
emotions.
Figure 18--53