Gothic Architecture

Abstract

The architectural tradition now known as Gothic flourished across most of Europe throughout the later Middle Ages, producing spectacular structures that dominate their home cities even in the 21st century, such as the cathedrals of Chartres, Lincoln, Strasbourg, Milan, and Segovia. All of these buildings incorporate pointed arches, ribbed vaults, traceried windows, spires, pinnacles, and prominent buttresses, including flying buttresses. The development of these stereotypically Gothic features involved the bold extrapolation of motifs seen in the preceding Romanesque style. Although these period labels were not used in the Middle Ages, the Gothic mode was recognized as innovative when it first emerged in the 12th century, and it continued to be identified with the modern in the four centuries that followed. This mode first arose in northern France, and by the middle of the 13th century, French builders had created cathedrals and churches with daringly skeletal structures whose lightness would not be rivaled until the Industrial Revolution. Meanwhile, the fashion for Gothic forms had begun to spread across Europe so that the interplay between international currents and indigenous influences gave rise to a wide variety of national and regional styles. The Gothic mode achieved its fullest expression in the realm of church design, but even there its application was less than wholly systematic, and many important church buildings thus lack one or more of the features stereotypically associated with the style. Many forms originally developed in the context of church design, conversely, eventually became fashionable in secular construction, despite the different functional requirements of these building types. In the meantime, Gothic builders engaged in fruitful dialogue with makers of manuscripts, goldwork, stained glass, sculpture, and liturgical furniture, fostering the cross-medium exchange of ideas and motifs. The Gothic mode dominated European architectural production until the early 16th century, more than a century after the revival of Antique architectural fashions began in Renaissance Florence. The term “Gothic,” in fact, has its roots in the writings of Italian Renaissance authors who falsely associated this highly sophisticated late medieval tradition with the supposedly barbaric Goths who had sacked Rome a millennium earlier. Although profoundly misleading from a historical perspective, this terminology has endured, in part perhaps because it captures an idea of the Gothic as a foil to the classical tradition. Indeed, while the Gothic mode lost its leading position in the decades after 1500 because of the growing taste for Renaissance classicism, it enjoyed several afterlives in the following centuries, inspiring the designers of structures ranging from scrupulously historicizing neo-Gothic churches and university buildings to soaring skyscrapers. The Gothic tradition thus ranks among the most significant currents in the history of Western architecture. For sake of coherence, the present article considers only the development of the original Gothic tradition in medieval Europe, and for sake of concision it cites only books, with an emphasis on synthetic studies whose own bibliographies can serve as useful pointers to monographic studies and more specialized periodical literature.