Gothic Art Through Medieval Eyes

Who wrote ‘Gothic Art: Glorious Visions’ and what does it argue?

Michael Camille

In his book, Camille argues that Gothic art is best understood through the medieval eye as the medieval people understood it. People in the 13th cent were not seeking to label architectural components or decipher symbols, but were enraptured witnesses to new ways of seeing. He sees Gothic as the first architectural style to fully permeate the world of things.

What kind of things were happening in Europe from 1000-1200?

• Expansion of Monasticism

• Rise in the cult of saints (more churches built to house the relics of these saints)

• Building Boom

  • Christianisation of Roman forms - taking Roman forms and using them as a narrative space

  • St Giles-du-Gard, France

  • Abbey Church of Sainte Foy

How were Romanesque Churches shaped?

They were cross-shaped, with a nave and transept

What does ‘Romanesque’ argue, and who wrote it?

Marian Bleeke

• She argues that hybridity is a key to understanding the term ‘Romanesque’ and the 11th and 12th century artistic material to which it refers

• The term was first used in the early 19th century referring to certain types of medieval architecture- some architecture that has a relationship to Ancient Rome but deviated away from it

• Romano= purity, Romanesco= hybrid/corruption

• Romanesque vs Gothic, Rounded vs Pointed, accepted vs denigrated- Romanesque is seen as closer to the classical, yet still the precursor of Gothic

• Trachtenberg- Romanesque as ‘medieval historicism’, and Gothic as ‘Medieval Modernism’

• She looks to the sculptures in the shrine to St Lazarus and the sculptures that formed a tableau of the resurrection of Lazarus

• Separate traditions of scholarship on the sculptures from the church fabric and those from shrine demonstrate series of binary oppositions at work in the reading of Medieval sculpture as either Romanesque or Gothic: 2D or 3D, non naturalistic vs naturalistic, architectural vs devotional

• Can Ireland have produced ‘Romanesque Art’?

  • tension between the national or local and the foreign or international as shaping Romanesque art in Ireland and elsewhere

Who wrote ‘GOTHIC’ and what does it argue?

Matthew Reeve

• Breaks down Gothic’s many significations (ethnicity, fashion, art, music, literature, architecture)

• Gothic is less suggestive of the nature of the middle ages itself than it is of the culture’s perceived temporal and ideological distance from it. The term is constantly reimagined, it is elastic

• Shift from a retrospective to a ‘modern’ or progressive approach to spirituality and reform was a central narrative of religious thought during the 12th cent, the same years that gave birth to the Gothic

• Gothic as a style that could morph to accommodate a wide range of ideas- erred by being profoundly unnatural (or anticlassical) in its complex ornamental language

• Gothic intimately connected to the homosexuality when used in opposition to the classical ‘masculine and unaffected’

• Horace Walpole- 18th century patron of the Gothic

Who wrote ‘Continuity and Contextuality: Saint Denis, Merovingians, Capetians and Paris’ and what did it argue?

William Clark

• Many of the features modern scholarship has often regarded as ‘new’ in Suger’s commissions can be understood as deliberate appropriations and/or imitations of Merovingian capitals and columns deliberately reused or imitated in the abbey

• Attempt by Louis VI and VII to associate themselves with Clovis

• Early structure of the building not only affected decisions made by the 12th cent builders but also determined the choices of the patrons

• He picks out the three categories of associations with earlier structures:

  • Dimensional and proportional transfers from the old church to the new additions (principally the Western bays)

  • Inclusion of actual pieces of the old church in the new east end

  • Imitations of older forms by the two 12th century builders

• Efforts to harmonise the new with the old- many of ancient objects in treasury fashioned into liturgical pieces.

• Many distinctive features appearing appearing ‘new’ to modern eyes and associated with the start of the Gothic style in Paris would have had different references for a 12th cent audience, potentially meaning ‘ancient’ and symbolising the continuous, living history of the community

What are the components of a Romanesque church portal?

What structure is this and what is its significance?

The Basilica of St Denis, Paris

• Much of the stylistic choices and commission work done by the Abbot Suger, who documented his process extensively

• First rose window, to our knowledge, to appear as an integral element in the design of a Western façade of a church- form that would dominate Gothic architecture throughout history

• Style was so unlike anything from the past that it was called opus modernum, modern architecture, and so French that it came to be known as opere francigena.

• At first glance, the façade looks Romanesque- reminding of Christianisation of the Roman triumphal arch- it is the first Gothic building, but elements of it look to the past

• Mix of rounded and pointed arches

• This was the royal abbey and the church where all of the Kings of France were to be buried

• Brightness links all architectural elements together- thinner walls, pointed arches, higher walls- cohesive programme of light

Who was Abbot Suger and what was his significance?

• Suger is one of the most important men in French history- loyal advisor and intimate friend of Louis VI and Louis VII

• He was the Abbot of St Denis and wrote ‘The Book of Suger’ to document his commissioning and choices in remodelling St Denis.

• Suger’s workmen must be credited with creating a new style, the gothic Style, which dominated western Europe for almost three centuries

• Gothic architecture is a way for Suger to ‘leave Earth’- conflates St Denis (matyr) and St Denis (Dionysius the aerophagies, writing on light and the divine)

• Suger really wants to be remembered, wants to be associated with the building visually and textually- Inscriptions on the original doors, prayers for his soul

• Interested in materials and gold but materials are a means to an end- use these as points of departure to let your mind travel to God- all about spiritual ascent

What is this and where?

• The North Portal of the Church of St Denis

• Depicting the beheading of St Denis (the 1st Bishop of Paris, martyred in 3rd C, Patron saint of French Monarchy

How does the ‘new’ building respond to the old?

• Built around the structure of the old (Carolingian) church

• Reused Merovingian and Carolingian columns and the crypt

• Enlargement of the space to respond to a growing population

• Unexpected obstruction in renovation- popular legend recounted that the old Church, believed to have been built by Dagobert, had been consecrated by Christ himself and a crowd of angels on the eve of its consecration by the clergy. This miraculous event of course endowed the building- and indeed every stone from which it was built- with the veneration due a relic

• Suger was forced to build his new church piecemeal, beginning at the western entrance and then moving to the Eastern end to erect his splendid new choir, leaving the old nave and transept standing between the two

• Striking contrast at Saint Denis between the crypt and the choir above it demonstrates vividly the difference between the Romanesque and Gothic construction

Who wrote ‘Suger’s Miracles, Branner’s Bourges: Reflections on ‘Gothic Architecture’ as Medieval Modernism’, and what does it argue?

Marvin Trachtenburg

• Gothic represents the ‘full architectural turn to modernism’. This turn involved a conscious ‘critique’ and ‘radical mutation and reversal’ of earlier forms like the Romanesque groin vault, leading to the rib vault

• Movement towards medieval modernist was driven by a ‘powerful, iconoclastic anti historicist urge’ and ‘modernist consciousness and desire’

• Features like the column persisted in Early Gothic but were gradually subverted and transformed, becoming ‘anticlassical’ in their usage and form

• Approach allows for a new way of viewing architectural history, not in horizontal chronological layers (Romanesque vs Gothic), but vertically, as a continuum organised around the twin strands of modernist and historicist discourse

What structure is this and what is its significance?

Canterbury Cathedral

• Transition of Gothic Art to England

• Original structure caught fire in 1067, and was rebuilt by the Normans, elongating the shape and making it resemble the Gothic style

• Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in the NW transept in 1170

• The structure burned again in 1174 and was further remodelled by William of Sens and William the Englishman (adding quadripartite and sexpartite rib vaults, purbeck marble, emphasis on wall decoration, alternating pier/column and keystones)

Name these structures

What happened to the treasury of St Denis?

• Destruction of the tombs of the French Monarchy during the revolution

• ‘Escrain de Charlemagne’ in fragments- Cameo from the first century AD (Carolingian reliquary)

• Cross of St Eloi destroyed

What is this and why is it significant?

This is the Chalice of Abbot Suger, made from the antique treasures of St Denis, and Christianised

Who was responsible for the documentation and commissioning of the rebuilding of Canterbury after the second fire?

Gervase of Canterbury

• Half a century after Suger - represents the younger generation’s more factual attitude towards the world around him

• The choir was consumed by fire, and he details the damage and repair very factually

• Columns were exceedingly weakened by the fire- William of Sens (workman) confessed that pillars and all they supported needed to be destroyed- ordered stone from overseas- long and expensive process

• laid foundation for the enlargement of the church at the eastern part- because a chapel of St Thomas [Becket] was to be built there

• Dug cemetery of the monks - disturbed bones of many holy monks, Chapel of the Holy Trinity was then levelled to the ground

• The new piers were increased in their length by about 12 feet’

What type of vaults are these?

Why do Gothic arches need less strong buttressing systems to Romanesque?

Thrust lines- rounded roman arches have thrust lines that go further out to the side and need strong support. Gothic pointed arches need less support and can have flying buttresses and thinner walls.