The Basilica of Saint-Denis had two towers of similar height on the west front, and this is a plan that was imitated in the plan for Notre-Dame de Paris. For the longest time, these enormous Gothic cathedrals were the city's landmarks before modern tall buildings. This article will try to explain more the characteristic of gothic architecture and style with some examples. Image Source: unsplash. Image Source: pixabay. Image Source: pexels. Pointed Arches were another critical feature of gothic architecture to be both decorative and practical.
The pointed arch was of a sturdy little design that had a form that distributed the force of bulky walls and heavy ceilings, which could offer more support than the formerly used pillars. The gothic arch was of aesthetic value and beauty like a workhorse, and it influenced other gothic designs like the vaulted ceilings.
Instead of the round arches, which were characteristic of the Romanesque buildings, architects using the gothic style adapted the tall thin pointed arches found in Islamic architecture. This profile highlighted each cathedral's height by pointing towards the sky and accommodating a vaulting in a similar shape. Ribbed vaulting is another art form during the Gothic period because the pointed arch results involved barrel vaults-arches placed parallel to one another and supported the rounded roof.
These vaulted ceilings used the pointed arch technology to spread and distribute the weight and force from the upper floors, and they allowed ceilings to be taller than they were before, providing an impression of height and elegance. As a result of the force distribution within the vaulting ceilings, the vaults could be constructed in different sizes and shapes.
The flying buttress is a gothic architecture feature that defines the external characteristics and acts to spread the tall walls' weight. The architects' used the flying buttresses to support the building's structure by transferring the force to the ground. It was both a decorative and practical element of history and was elaborately designed. The flying buttresses gave a sense of movement and flight because they seemed to sweep and dart around each building.
Often, the flying buttress was decorated with intricate carvings, giving it a sense of grandness and importance. As one of the most notable characteristics of gothic architecture and ornate decorations, Gargoyles were decorative monstrous little creatures that sat along the roof and battlements of gothic castles and buildings. Gargoyles have two purposes, and one was to drain off rainwater off the roof, gushing through their mouth then plummeting to the ground.
Another purpose was to strike fear in the ill-educated peasants and scare them into the gothic cathedral or church. Gargoyles were one of the critical characteristics of gothic architecture and had evil features and threatening poses that were exaggerated and encouraged many to seek safety and solace in a church or cathedral in the world marked with superstition and fear.
Other examples of ornate decorations included statues of saints and historical figures, embellished colonnades and colonettes, pinnacles and spires, and sculptural moldings. The Gothic Revival was a conscious movement that began in England to revive Gothic forms, mostly in the second half of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century. The lateth century examples were often domestic and highly decorative, as seen at Strawberry Hill, which made the style fashionable.
In the 19th century its main champion was Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin who, among others, took a much more scholarly approach to the revival of past styles. This ultimately led to an ambitious programme of Victorian church building, served by architects immersed in the style.
Following on and expanding the Romanesque practice, Early Gothic churches also employed sculpture to decorate the building. Religious scenes were carved into the tympanum over the doorways, and the surrounding archivolts and lintels were filled with figures. Secular images were also created, as the Basilica of St.
Denis had the signs of the zodiac carved into the sides of the left portal and scenes depicting the agricultural labors of the month on the right. Most noted were the various column statues, depicting Old Testament Kings and Prophets on the portal columns. Beginning around , the High Gothic period developed toward ever-greater verticality by including pinnacles, spires, and emphasizing both the structural and decorative effect of flying buttresses.
The rose window was expanded in size, and the tracery, the intervening metal bars between sections of stained glass, was elaborated for decorative effect. The High Gothic period was also marked by the development of two distinct sub styles: the Rayonnant and the Flamboyant.
Most Late Gothic architecture employed the Flamboyant Style, which continued into the s. High Gothic churches continued to use sculptures, particularly around the portals, but figurative treatments became more naturalistic, as the figures stepped free of the columns that once contained them. The small work, though elegant and stylized, is naturalistically sculpted, depicting the s-curve of movement and the realistic flow of draperies.
The International Gothic style is the term used for the courtly decorative style of illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, painting, and sculpture that developed around The Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV in Prague, the Valois King of France, and the Visconti of Milan were the most important patrons and competed with each other to create a cultural capital that would attract leading artists. The most important developments in later Gothic architecture were the Rayonnant Style followed by the Flamboyant Style.
In painting, the most significant singular style was that of the Italian Sienese School, and the illuminated manuscript painting of the International Gothic Style. Rayonnant is a term used to describe the style of French High Gothic architecture. Architects began to emphasize repetitive decorative motifs, a smaller, more human-scaled building, and a plethora of stained glass. Little is known about the architect, except his name and that after his death in he was buried in the church where his tombstone honored him as a master of architecture.
A famous early example of the Rayonnant style was Sainte-Chappelle in Paris. Commissioned by the French King Louis IX to hold his numerous holy relics, most notably the Crown of Thorns, the chapel was also a symbol of royal prestige. Its fifteen large windows created a sense of soaring verticality and lightness, as wall space was almost eliminated and replaced by resplendent images and thin golden ribs.
Up to and including the preceding period of Romanesque architecture c. But Gothic designers solved this problem around with several brilliant innovations. First and most important, they developed a ribbed vault , made up of intersecting barrel vaults, whose stone ribs supported a vaulted ceiling of thin stone panels. Not only did this new arrangement significantly reduce the weight and thus the outward thrust of the ceiling vault, but also the vault's weight was now transmitted along a distinct stone rib, rather than along a continuous wall edge, and could be channelled from the rib to other supports, such as vertical piers or flying buttresses , which eliminated the need for solid, thick walls.
Furthermore, Gothic architects replaced the round arches of the barrel vault with pointed arches which distributed the vault's weight in a more vertical direction.
To put it simply, until Gothic builders revolutionized building design, the weight of the roof vault fell entirely on the supporting walls. As a result, the heavier the roof or the higher the roof, the more downward and outward pressure on the walls and the thicker they had to be to stay upright.
A Romanesque cathedral, for instance, had massively thick continuous walls which took up huge amounts of space and created small, dim interiors. In contrast, Gothic architects channelled the weight of the roof along the ribs of the ceiling, across the walls to a flying buttress a semi-arch , and then down vertical supports piers to the ground. In effect, the roof no longer depended on the walls for support.
As a result the walls of a Gothic cathedral could be built a lot higher which made the building even more awesome , they could be a lot thinner which created more interior space ; they could contain more windows which led to brighter interiors and, where stained glass art was used, more Biblical art for the congregation. All this led to the emergence of a completely new type of cathedral interior, whose tall, thin walls gave the impression of soaring verticality, enhanced by multi-coloured light flooding through huge expanses of stained glass.
Its exterior was more complex than before, with lines of vertical piers connected to the upper walls by flying buttresses, and large rose windows. As the style evolved, decorative art tended to supercede structural matters.
Thus decorative stonework known as tracery was added, along with a rich assortment of other decorative features, including lofty porticos, pinnacles and spires.
Master Masons Medieval masons were highly skilled craftsmen and their trade was most frequently used in the building of castles, churches and cathedrals. A Master Mason was someone who also had charge over carpenters, glaziers and other works and work teams. Indeed, all skilled and unskilled workers on a building site were under the supervision of the Master Mason. He himself was based in what was known as the Mason's Lodge. All major building sites would have a Mason's Lodge, from which all the work on the site was organised.
History and Development of Gothic Architecture. The fusion of all the above mentioned structural elements into a coherent style of architecture occurred first in the Ile-de-France the region around Paris , whose prosperous inhabitants had sufficient resources to build the great cathedrals that now epitomize Gothic architecture.
Cathedrals with similar vaulting and windows soon appeared, beginning with Notre-Dame de Paris c.
0コメント