Gothic Europe

1. 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. 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. 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. 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 fourteenth century, a great plague, the Black Death, swept over western Europe and killed at least a quarter of its people. From 1378-1417, opposing popes resided in Rome and in Avignon in southern France during the political-religious crisis known as the Great Schism. 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.

2. Gothic Art Gothic Art: Structure of the Architecture *** indicates important terms *** *** *** *** *** ***

3. 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

4. Gothic Art Vaults of the ambulatory and radiating chapels of the choir St. Denis, France, 1140-1144 Birth of Gothic Architecture Figure 18--3 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.

5. 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 ]

6. Gothic Art Aerial view of Chartres Cathedral Chartres, France ca 1134 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

7. Gothic Art Royal Portal, west facade, Chartres Cathedral Chartres, France ca 1145-1155 Royal Portals Filled with Sculpture 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

8. Gothic Art Old Testament queen and two kings, from the Royal Portal at Chartres Cathedral Chartres, France ca 1145-1155 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 columns. Figure 18--6

9. Gothic Art Architecture Nave elevations of four French Gothic Cathedrals at the same scale.

10. Gothic Art Notre-Dame Paris, France ca 1180-1200 A New Cathedral Rises in Paris 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

11. Early Gothic Art Virgin and Child with Angels Chartres, France ca 1170 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.

12. High Gothic Art Rose window and lancets, north transept Chartres, France ca 1220 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 genius Figure 18--15

13. 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 ]

14. High Gothic Art Saints Martin, Jerome, and Gregory, jamb statues From the South Transcept Chartres, France ca 1220-1230 Another “Classical Revolution” Figure 18--16 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, as persons. Personality, revealed in human faces, makes the real difference.

15. Gothic Art Nave of Amiens Cathedral Amiens, France ca 1220 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 Gothic Counterpart. Figure 18--19

16. Gothic Art West facade of Reims Cathedral, Reims, France ca 1225-1290 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

17. 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 ]

18. Gothic Art Visitation, jamb statues of central doorway Reims, France ca 1230 Statues Begin to Converse 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

19. Gothic Art Interior of the Upper Chapel Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, France ca 1243-1248 A Radiant Royal Chapel 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 thirteenth-century stained glass. Sainte-Chapelle’s enormous windows filter the light and fill the interior with an unearthly rose-violet atmosphere. Approximately forty-nine feet high and fifteen feet wide, they were the largest designed up to their time. Figure 18--26

20. Gothic Art Virgin and Child (Virgin of Paris), Notre Dame Paris, France, early fourteenth century The Virgin as Queen 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 dominated northern Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Figure 18--27

21. Gothic Art Chapel of Henry VII, Westminster Abbey London, England ca 1503-1519 “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 at Rouen. Figure 18--43

22. Gothic Art Equestrian Portrait (Bamberg Rider) Bamberg Cathedral, Germany ca 1235-1240 Equestrian Statuary Revived 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 same impatience with subordination to architecture found in the Reims portal statues. Figure 18--52

23. Gothic Art Virgin with the Dead Christ (Röttgen Pietà) Rhineland, Germany ca 1300-1325 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 images of the Theotokos with the infant Jesus in her lap common in Byzantine art. Figure 18--53

24. 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 fee-standing, their details became more outwardly related to the human audience as expressions of recognizable human emotions. Figure 18--53