3 Characteristics

The style emphasizes verticality and features almost skeletal stone structures with great expanses of glass, sharply pointed spires, cluster columns, flying buttresses, ribbed vaults, pointed arches using the ogee shape, and inventive sculptural detail. These features are all the consequence of a focus on large stained glass windows that allowed more light to enter than was possible with older styles. In order to achieve this, flying buttresses were used to enable higher ceilings and slender columns.

Gothic cathedrals could be highly decorated with statues on the outside and painting on the inside. Both usually told Biblical stories, emphasizing Old Testament prophecy and the New Testament (see Christian theology).

Conservative 13th century Gothic in Provence: Basilica of Mary Magdalene, Saint Maximin la Sainte Baume.

Important Gothic churches could also be severely simple. At the Basilica of Mary Magdalene in Saint-Maximin, Provence (illustration, right), the local traditions of a sober massive Romanesque architecture were strong. The basilica, begun in the 13th century under the patronage of Charles of Anjou, was laid out on an ambitious scale (it was never completed all the way to the western entrance front) to accommodate pilgrims that came to venerate relics. Building in the Gothic style continued at the basilica until 1532.

In Gothic architecture new technology stands behind the new building style. The Gothic cathedral was supposed to be a microcosm representing the world, and each architectural concept, mainly the loftiness and huge dimensions of the structure, were intended to pass a theological message: the great glory of God versus the smallness and insignificence of the mortal being.

4 Gothic architecture in England

The "Old Palace" at Hatfield House, for the Bishop of Ely, 1497

Fewer examples of secular structures in Gothic style survive. The "Old Palace" at Hatfield, 1497, (illustration, left) is the entrance wing, with its imposing gatehouse, which gave access to the protected inner court. This is an example of the last phase of Gothic design in England, still untouched by the Renaissance under way in central Italy. Local building traditions informed a vernacular style that was as important as Gothic in the final appearance. The roofs are tiled in the East Anglian vernacular tradition. Substantial roofs enclose essential storage area in the spacious attics: the sight of such an expanse of roof evoked a sense of well-being and security. Gothic elements are the paired lancet windows joined under a single molding that threw rainwater away from their sills, and the buttresses between each pier and on the angles of the gatehouse tower, with its fortification references.

5 Sequence of Gothic styles: France

6 Sequence of Gothic styles: England

The designations of styles in English architecture still follows conventions of labels given them by antiquaries in the 18th century:

• Early English (ca 1180 - 1275)
• Decorated (ca 1275 - 1380 )
• Perpendicular (ca 1380 - 1520 ).

Early English:

• Salisbury Cathedral
• Wells Cathedral
• Westminster Abbey

Decorated or "Flamboyant":

• Exeter Cathedral

Perpendicular:

• King's College Chapel, Cambridge

7 Gothic revival

In England, some discrete Gothic details appeared on new construction at Oxford and Cambridge in the late 17th century, and at the archbishop of Canterbury's residence Lambeth Palace, a gothic hammerbeam roof was built in 1663 to replace a building that had been sacked during the English Civil War. It is not easy to decide whether these instances were Gothic survival or early appearances of Gothic revival, Gothic features clearly seemed appropriate to the English, in contexts of learning and religion, and these have been centers of neo-Gothic architecture too.

In England in the mid-18th century, the Gothic style was more widely revived, first as a decorative, whimsical alternative to Rococo that is still conventionally termed ' Gothick ', of which Horace Walpole's Twickenham villa " Strawberry Hill" is the familiar example. Then, especially after the 1830s, Gothic was treated more seriously in a series of Gothic revivals (sometimes termed Victorian Gothic or Neo-Gothic). The Houses of Parliament in London are an example of this Gothic revival style, designed by a major exponent of the early Gothic Revival, Augustus Pugin. Another example is the main building of the University of Glasgow designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. Chateau d'Abbadie, Hendaye, France: a Gothic pile for the natural historian and patron of astronomy Antoine d'Abbadie, 1860 - 1870; Viollet-le-Duc, architect In France, the towering figure of the Gothic Revival was Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who outdid historical Gothic constructions to create a Gothic as it ought to have been, notably at the fortified city of Carcassonne in the south of France and in some richly fortified keeps for industrial magnates (illustration, left). Viollet-le-Duc compiled and coordinated an Encyclopé'die medievale that was a rich repertory his contemporaries mined for architectural details but also also include armor, costume, tools, furniture, weapons and the like. He effected vigorous restoration of crumbling detail of French cathdrals, famously at Notre-Dame, many of whose most "Gothic" gargoyles are Viollet-le-Duc's. But he also taught a generation of reform-Gotghic designers and showed how to apply Gothic style to thoroughly modern structural materials, especially cast iron.

Neo-Gothic continued to be considered appropriate for college buildings (such as at Chicago, Yale, or Princeton) well into the 20th century, and was used, perhaps less appropriately, for early skyscrapers, such as the Woolworth Building, New York.

8 Some famous Gothic structures

Sexpartite vaulting of the late 12th century nave at Bourges

• St. Martin's Cathedral in Bratislava
• Chartres Cathedral
• Bourges Cathedral
  • Bourges Cathedral
• Cologne Cathedral
• St Mary's Church in Gdansk (the largest brick church in the world)
• Saint Barbara's Church in Kutna Hora
• Milan Cathedral, The Duomo
• Our Lady's Cathedral in Paris (the Notre-Dame for many)
• Reims Cathedral (where all the kings of France were crowned)
• Abbey church of Saint-Denis
• Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (famous for its colorful stained glass windows)
• Cathedral of Seville
• Ulm Cathedral (features the highest church tower)
• Cathedral of Saint Stephan in Vienna
• Wawel Cathedral in Kraków
• Westminster Abbey in London
• Zagreb Cathedral
• Ca' d'Oro, Venice

For a list of all Early Gothic buildings in the Paris Basin, http://www.johnjames.com.au/medievaldatabase-parischurches-A-B.shtml

9 Some famous Neo-Gothic structures

right Harkness Tower at Yale University; 1917-21, James Gamble Rogers, architect

• Palace of Westminster in London, the ( Houses of Parliament)
• St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City
• Tribune Tower in Chicago

10 Structures incorporating Gothic elements

• Brooklyn Bridge

11 See also

• Architectural history
• Architectural style
• Hawaiian Gothic Architecture
• Medieval architecture
• Cathedral architecture
• Gargoyle

Medieval architecture Gothic architecture Architectural styles

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