English Gothic and Late Gothic Architecture Notes

English Gothic and Late Gothic Architecture

England and France were closely related historically, with England once controlling much of France until 1204.
English architecture was influenced by continental styles.
Anglo-Norman Romanesque style was characterized by extreme massiveness and extensive decorative patterns, indicating that structural weight and surface complexity would become typical of English architecture during most of the Gothic period

Early English
- Late 12th century.
- Most directly influenced by France but considered purer.
Decorated or Curvilinear
- Late 13th century.
- Features exhilarating spatial effects and vaulting, with architecture expressing fantasy.
Perpendicular
- From the mid-14th to the late 16th century.
- Characterized by disciplined massiveness and decorative density.

This was the first bishopric.
Perpendicular nave built over early Anglo-Norman foundations.
Features an Early English choir and High Romanesque apse.
Second eastward extension included a horseshoe-shaped chapel.
Features an Early English circular chapel.
Three-level scheme, double arcade columns, English dog-tooth moldings, heavy multilayered walls, and capitals forming lush vegetation.
Interior reflects English tradition.

Features bundles of dense linear patterns in the interior.
Elaborate rib vaulting, including "crazy vaults" in the first choir, which deviate from the usual set of enframing and cross ribs.
Ridge-rib and supplementary cross ribs (tiercerons) are added.
Increased decoration of the elevation, especially in the Angel Choir.
Tierceron vaulting, extensive profiling of the colonnettes, trefoils filling the arcade spandrels, and reliefs of angels.

Tierceron vaults culminate here.
At the corner of each bay spring:
- Usual quadripartite vault: three ribs.
- Crazy vaults of Lincoln: four or five ribs.
- Here: thirteen ribs and tiercerons.
Bundles of colonnettes run upwards at arcade level and join their counterparts at the ridge rib.

Early English cathedral with a new choir in Decorated Style (1330).
Three-part elevation retained, vault forms a netlike pattern, blind curvilinear tracery.
Net vault is a new conception.
Clerestory undulates between the piers.
Wall surface is a double-shell construction.
Patterns of line and decoration form continuity.
Strainer arches reinforce the crossing tower.
A curving stairway leads to the Chapter House, which was built with umbrella-like tierceron vaults and geometric window tracery.

Variety of place and time produced a wide stylistic range.
Space tends to be formed like a single, fluid totality.
Strong and even light conditions.
In many areas, the use of line became extreme, but in other areas, it almost disappeared.
In place of lines, stretched surfaces can be recognized.

Mendicant church containing the tomb of Saint Francis, the founder of the order.
Two-storied structure with almost the same plan on both levels.
Semicircular apse below, polygonal above.
Single-aisled nave of four large square bays.
Square transept on either site.
Lower Church: dark, heavy, and crypt-like.
Upper Church: bright, spacious, and elegant.
Simplicity in the interior, with main decorations being frescoes on the walls.

Represents the transformation of Mendicant hall churches into the German Late Gothic type.
The inner polygon is three-sided, while the outer is seven-sided, presenting a complex pattern of misalignments.
Lower, darker nave.
Stretched columns, huge bright space, and intricate vaulting (completed in the 16th century).
Shallow chapels and a clerestory encircle the space, with large, tracery-filled windows.

Most developed example of a hall church.
Same format as in Gmünd but with more complex details.
Outer wall more plastic, more elaborate tracery.
Articulate piers run into the vaults instead of monocylindrical columns; an encircling cornice became a richly decorated balcony.

Nave is a copy of St. Denis.
A facade designed by Erwin von Steinbach (1277): suspended tracery screen in front of a solid structural layer; only the portal zone was built, with upper parts having more conservative lines.
Single asymmetrically placed tower (1399-1439).
Octagonal shaft, high steep window, open stair turrets, innovative spire built in the form of inverted filigree arches in tier upon tier.

Siena was built on three hills.
A 13th-century sloping, theater-shaped campo (medieval square) was created at the meeting point of the three hills.
Palazzo Pubblico – communal palace made of red brick and travertine with Gothic windows and a bell tower.
Duomo – Gothic cathedral made of marble.

Cathedral with an octagonal Romanesque baptistery and bell tower.
Triple-aisled nave, four gigantic bays.
Rich classicizing details but somber interior.
Octagon of the eastern end rivals the Pantheon in diameter.
Campanile: polychrome marble incrustation recalling the Romanesque baptistery but with a richer and more fluid design.
Cathedral is an eclectic Gothic design.
The dome will be constructed in the Renaissance.