Art and architecture

Abstract

The visual culture of thirteenth-century western Europe saw the refinement and spread of the Gothic style throughout much of north-west Europe, and in this sense it consolidated and extended the substantial achievements of the twelfth. Since the late eleventh century, northwestern Europe had experienced what some analysts have called a 'building boom' which benefited monastic establishments and the expanding cities. Though the thirteenth century saw enormous regional variations in the way the great church was conceived, the period was in other ways marked by increasing standardisation. Between 1100 and 1300 urban cathedral churches throughout western Europe became highly centralised buildings, integrating beneath one roof religious practices previously dispersed across the complex of cathedral buildings. In tandem with these changes, the thirteenth century witnessed transformations in the bases of art production and patronage. The concentration of courtly culture at major centres of power like Paris and London served further to galvanise the importance of the urban artistic economy.