Gothic Architecture Research Articles

«La Casa», metáfora edilicia constitucional. Variaciones literarias de diseño y crisis constructiva en Poe, Cortázar y Borges

Estudio interdisciplinario de Cultura literaria del Derecho («Derecho y Literatura») centrado en tres cuentos (La caída de la casa Usher, 1839, de E. A. Poe; Casa tomada, 1946, de J. Cortázar, y «La casa de Asterión», 1947, de J. L. Borges) donde el uso de la expresión «casa» se presenta como una metáfora edilicia desde cuya significancia constitucional el autor prueba a distinguir lo gótico, neogótico y fantástico-mítico del diseño y crisis constitucionales respectivamente del modelo monárquico de Constitución, de la Constitución Nacional de 1853 con la «Constitución peronista» de 1949, y de la Constitución de Weimar de 1919. En relación al periodo de crisis constitucional argentina derivado del llamado «Proceso de Reorganización Nacional» (Dictadura cívico-militar, 1976-1983) y en su contexto, también recupera el relato cortaziano «Segunda vez» (1976), planteando desde él no la rectificación de un modelo constructivo imperfecto o defectivo metafóricamente identificable con la «vivienda» constitucional de 1853 o la «Constitución peronista» de 1949, sino como diseño constructivo de vacío constitucional transfigurado en «casa de los horrores». El trabajo termina con una apelación a la «Cultura literaria del Derecho» como variante latina del «Law and Literature Movement» y la aspiración a provocar un sugestivo programa de lectura crítica en torno al proyecto Constitucionalismo y Literatura latinoamericana.

Jantzen and Sedlmayr: Diaphaneia—an impossible presence?

The immediacy of visual experience has always appeared as an indicator of verifiability of a presence. However, architecture as a bodily presence seems to be a reality that does not need verification. Yet there remains the issue of sacral architecture, which strives for the transcendent. What can be a medium in the experience of theophany?
 Sacral experience of Gothic architecture is very suitable for such observations. However, as I hope to demonstrate, only one theory seems to have actually approached the understanding of interconnections between the Holy Presence and the experience of it on an architectonic level. Precisely, it is Hans Jantzen’s (1881-1967) programmatic theory of “a diaphanic structure”.
 Term “diaphaneia” was first introduced by Jantzen in his article “Über den gotischen Kirchenraum” (1927). By that time the word had been used in near-esoteric circles (from Jacob Boehme to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and James Joyce).
 Jantzen’s seminal article is dedicated to the space of the Gothic cathedral, which he sees as ritual-liturgical. It is this multilayered space, he argues, that has a “diaphanic structure”. In his late texts (from the 1950 and 1960s) diaphaneia is explored as a universal way of keeping in view the horizon of the invisible presence. Sedlmayr's perception of Jantzen's ideas shows that optical diaphaneia should be complemented with somatic diaphaneia (through “baldachin”, in Sedlmayr's structuralist terms).
 The ultimate question is if diaphaneia is merely a means of “spiritualisation” of both the cathedral per se and architectural theory. Although architecture keeps silent, an architectural theorist speaks: using Derrida’s words, diaphaneia becomes diaphonie.

Experiencing the Gothic Style

Eighteenth-century French accounts of Gothic churches are testimonies of both negative preconceptions about the Gothic style formed through reading and actual positive experiences of Gothic buildings. While Goethe at Strasbourg Cathedral reconciled the discrepancy between preconceived opinion and opinion based on experience by referring to history, many 18th-century French architects avoided any historicist interpretation after they visited churches. They continued to express a dislike for Gothic ornament, but also found they could admire the spaciousness of Gothic churches. Jacques-Germain Soufflot, who analysed the church of Notre Dame in Paris by moving through it, suggested disregarding ‘entirely the chimerical and bizarre ornaments of the Goths’, in favour of experiencing the church’s spatial qualities. This article argues that we can only understand how ideas about the Gothic style changed if we study them from the point of view of the observer of these buildings. This turnaround happened precisely through experience, which allowed 18th-century architects to reconcile their conflicting feelings. By moving through the buildings, they came to understand the idiosyncrasies of the Gothic, from its ornamentation to its spatiality. Beginning with Soufflot’s lecture of 1741, ‘Memoire sur l’architecture gothique’, this article analyses similar experiences of 18th-century architects and writers who focussed not on historicization (like Goethe did) but on the ahistorical aspects of the Gothic. It thus aims to unveil the complexity of the workings of style.

Tłumaczka Aleksandra Olędzka-Frybesowa jako eseistka i poetka

This article presents the essays and poems of Aleksandra Olędzka-Frybesowa, who was a renowned translator from French and also English. In her essays, Olędzka-Frybesowa specialises in the Romanesque and Gothic architecture and sculpture of Western Europe as well as European painting from Medieval Ages onwards. She is also familiar with the art of South-East Europe. Her essays cover literary criticism devoted especially to poetry, with a particular interest in French and mystical poetry, as well as haiku, which was also her own artistic activity. The author of this article analyses Olędzka-Frybesowa’s ten volumes of poems, which follow a thematic pattern, especially the theme of wind (air). The analysis provides various insights into a variety of functions of this particular theme, from reality-based meanings to mystical and ethical features. This variety of funtions of the wind theme is supported by a particular melody of the poem and its abundant use of metaphors.

Review: Late Gothic Architecture: Its Evolution, Extinction, and Reception, by Robert Bork

Robert Bork Late Gothic Architecture: Its Evolution, Extinction, and Reception Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2018, 552 pp., 32 color and 337 b/w illus. $119, ISBN 9782503568942 Robert Bork has written a remarkable book that in its scope has no competition. He offers a detailed analysis of late Gothic architecture, tracing its long history and examining the ultimately successful challenge to the style made by classicizing architecture from Italy. Bork reminds us that the years just prior to this challenge witnessed some of the most dazzling and wondrous inventions of Gothic architecture. Nave vaults were equipped with looping ribs resembling the petals of flowers. Smaller chapels displayed hanging ribs, miraculously suspended several feet below the webbing of the vaults. Tracery fields became ever larger and more complex, veiling broad segments of facades. Artful filigree towers of intricate design rose far above the pavement. Gothic elements became increasingly mimetic, imitating vegetal forms and other objects, such as the enormous buckle dressing the buttress at the Portuguese monastery of Tomar. Yet by the middle of the sixteenth century, the Gothic was in decline. For much of the previous century the Gothic's innovative building techniques had led architects such as Filarete to call it the modo moderno ; by 1550 this was no longer the case. Giorgio Vasari changed the nomenclature, referring to classicizing approaches as modern and the northern tradition as barbarous, German, Gothic. This extensive volume has numerous strengths. Bork deals with both northern and Italian buildings, Gothic and antique, and discusses the complex interplay between practices on both sides of the Alps. He charts the Gothic's origins and trajectory, including the High Gothic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, noted for its supposed rationality, an aesthetic opposed to later manifestations. He offers the most detailed account to date of how the late Gothic evolved from …

Gothic and neo-gothic in the architecture of modern European cities

This article analyzes the value social dynamics of European culture based on the analysis of the semantics of Gothic and Neo-Gothic styles in the architecture of European cities. The semantic and social status levels of these phenomena are investigated. It is revealed that the Gothic style, having appeared at a symbolic level as a mature expression of the spirit and dogma of Catholicism, in the urban space appeared to be a marker of the social, property and political superiority of status groups (clergy, monarch, burghers, feudal nobility; status cities).

Fresken des Schönen Stils in der Pfarrkirche von Torna (heute Turňa nad Bodvou, Slowakei) im einstigen Oberungarn

Mural paintings of the International Gothic style in the parish church of Torna (today: Turňa nad Bodvou, Slovakia). The study gives as an introduction a short survey of the medieval history of the Hungarian Kingdom. It introduces the mural paintings of the sanctuary of the village church of Torna, which came to light between 2007 and 2014. The author emphasizes their high artistic level and presents their artistic context in Hungary. The patron of the village and the church after 1409 was Paulus Özdögei Besenyő. He was an outstanding person of the Hungarian royal court and a member of the Order of the Dragon of King Sigismund of Luxembourg. He was the donor of the painted decoration of the church of Torna. The author dates the frescoes between the years of 1410–1414.

“Ars sine scientia” or rather “Ars sine geometria”? The debate of 1400 on the elevation of Milan cathedral

The construction of Milan Cathedral from 1386 was one of the most important episodes in the history of Italian and European architecture because of the uniqueness of the building itself — the largest Gothic church ever constructed in Italy — and because of the presence of some of the most authoritative architects of the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries in Europe (Lombard, French, German).The documentation about the discussions on how to build the Duomo in the late Trecento and early Quattrocento, especially on the structural choices to be made and the different Lombard and Northern building-site practices, made famous to English readers in a celebrated article by James Ackerman, is extraordinarily rich and extensive, permitting considerations on the relationship between medieval architectural ideals and an actual project.The paper focuses on the famous discussions of 1400, in part a re-run of those of 1392. It will be argued that famous criticism by the French expert Jean Mignot of Milanese architects involving the terms ars and scientia could have a very different meaning from the one generally accepted in the literature. Consequently, it will result that Mignot wanted to return to the original project proposed by Gabriele Stornaloco, which embodied the desired correspondence between the sacred architecture and the perfect God’s world.All of which, could be of some interest to medievalists in general, and to those concerned with architectural theory and with the relationship between Gothic architecture and literature in particular.

John D. Lyons ed., The Dark Thread. From Tragical Histories to Gothic Tales, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2019

Book review in French for a multi-authored volume attempting to measure the impact of the Gothic style on French literary genres.

A sweltering afternoon: Herberton, Far North Queensland

This short prose comprises childhood recollections interspersed with a brief contemporary travel ‘memoir’, juxtaposing past and present narratives in a limited gothic style. It conveys a sense of the sultry ambience of far north Queensland’s tablelands region, inland from Cairns, with a particular focus on Herberton, a town in the ‘dry tropics’, with a mining history.

A Gothic Reformation: Tractarianism in the Scottish Episcopal Church

From the mid-eighteenth century Episcopalianism experienced a remarkable resurgence, reflected in membership, church building and – equally – the development of distinctive liturgical and aesthetic traditions. This article explores the influences of Tractarianism, Romanticism and the gothic literature and architecture on the development of a distinctly Scottish Episcopal tradition.

DECORATIVE ELEMENTS IN BRICK STYLE ARCHITECTURE IN N.A. PANIN’S BUILDING

The aim of this work is to identify the architectural and artistic features of A.N. Panin‟s building and carry out a detailed analysis of plastic facades, which represent a synthesis of gothic and pseudo-Russian styles. The building locates in the historic part of Rostov-on-Don, at the intersection of the oldest streets of the city – Beregovvya and Pochtovyi (now Ostrovskii) streets in Rostov-on-Don. The study identifies the features of plastic facade design using composite techniques and brick decoration, characteristic of eclecticism, which combines different styles in the plastic design of facades. The object has not been studied enough at the moment, although it is one of the cultural heritage objects designed by N. M. Sokolov, whose objects form the historical part of Rostov-on-Don.

Analysis of the Condition of Damaged Vaults after a Construction Disaster in a Historic Church

The paper presents an analysis of the causes and effects of masonry vaults damage after a construction disaster in the historic church of St. George in Hajduki Nyskie (southern Poland), dated to the beginning of the XIV century. As a result of the collapse of the eastern gable wall, some parts of the vaults and a wooden roof were destroyed, as well as other structural elements and part of the church's equipment. The building combines late Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque style elements, representing high, trans-regional historical and artistic, religious and cultural values, in particular due to the valuable gothic wall paintings preserved in the nave. The paper presents the state of the building before and after the construction disaster as well as recommendations regarding the reconstruction of the vaults.

“Imperfect, Confused, Interrupted”: Biography, Nationalism, and Generic Hybridity in William Godwin’s Life of Chaucer

ABSTRACTThough relatively unknown today, William Godwin’s Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (1803) was instrumental in the eventual popularization of Chaucer as a national poet in the Victorian period. Yet, the Life of Chaucer does not simply prefigure later nineteenth-century concerns with nationalism via canon formation; nor does it follow the template of literary biography established by Samuel Johnson. Indeed, the Life of Chaucer seems not to be about Chaucer at all but, as Robert Southey complained, is a “heterogeneous mixture” of cultural, historical, and aesthetic contexts which failed to channel Chaucer’s life into “one unbroken narrative” (472). Rather than see Godwin’s “heterogeneous mixture” as a defect, this essay reads the Life of Chaucer as an experimental text engaged in an unsettling of disciplinary, cultural, and national boundaries. Godwin’s Life reads Chaucer through a multiplicity of disciplines and genres, from Gothic architecture, to the invention of musical counterpoint, miracle plays, metallurgy, dreams, and religious iconography, among others. Godwin approaches biography not in terms of the hypostasis of the subject or nation as an isolatable system but as a “life” irreducible to a single genre or culture that would allow us to fix its meaning.

Sorely visible: plants, roots, and national identity

Societal Impact StatementHistorical and visual culture research methods can be used to identify the complex symbolism assigned to plants in public urban spaces. This symbolism can divide opinion and generate heated debate on what is considered to be native, other, and culturally and aesthetically appropriate. This article is a contribution to the emerging field of critical plant studies, examining events in Italy when exotic plants were installed in a public square. The work encompasses elements of environmental, anthropological, architectural, and art historical studies, to reveal important aspects of our relationship with plants, other people, and our past and future histories. Summary The last few years have been characterized by dramatic sociocultural events: from Brexit to Trump's election in the USA; the unthinkable has manifested itself as the index of insidious and undervalued ideological networks. Despite the bleak outlook, the deep sense of moral loss, and ethical disorientation, these events could function as an opportunity to productively think beyond the fictitious righteousness of postmodern politics. In the middle of a cold night, in February 2017, Starbucks Coffee Co., in collaboration with Italian architect Marco Bay, installed a grove of palm and banana trees opposite Milan's much‐loved gothic cathedral. Public opinion instantly split. Milan's rude awakening revealed a tale of two cities: on one side were those who lauded the initiative and on the opposite were those who condemned the trees’ exotic origin as unrepresentative of true Italianicity. Against the backdrop of strained relationships between Italy and the European Union, due to the handling of North‐African and Middle‐Eastern diasporas, palms and bananas have found themselves at the center of an unexpectedly acrimonious public discussion. This article considers the role played by plant‐politics and architectural aesthetics in constructing national identity and otherness while tapping into all important and often concealed aspects of contemporary society's collective unconscious.

The Catholic Grotesque: Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia and Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

ABSTRACTThis paper proposes a comparison of Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia with Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood to consider the similar ways in which these two works of art employ the grotesque and how Gaudí’s construction might better illuminate O’Connor’s. In both works we see not just stylistic but also macrostructural elements that, paradoxically, are simultaneously grotesque and congruent. The very form of the basilica and of the novel is misshapen, but it is exactly this intentional deformity that produces balance and stability in each work. In the Sagrada Familia, structural elements such as fragmented, inclined columns give an impression of chaos and instability, but these very divergences from traditional Gothic architecture allow the building to be self-supporting. O’Connor’s Wise Blood is similarly constructed: the novel’s twelfth chapter, in which Enoch Emery’s subplot splits from the main narrative, has been criticised as an unnecessary plot point that harms the text’s overall integrity. In reality, this supposed structural weakness in Wise Blood becomes the novel’s strength as it imitates the distorted reality it aims to represent. In this way, Enoch’s split subplot paradoxically synthesises incongruity and wholeness to produce an object at once structurally grotesque and yet fully integrated as Gaudí’s unfinished masterpiece.

Normanitas and Memorial Traditions in the Apulian Architecture of Emperor Frederick II

ABSTRACT From 1225 to 1250, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, built or renovated at least seventy defensive structures in the southern Italian province of Apulia. These buildings blended Roman, Islamic, or Byzantine elements with newer Gothic architecture; however, many of these architectural traits had already been adapted by the Norman lords of southern Italy in the preceding two centuries. Thus we must consider Frederick's originality in light of this less studied trend in the existing Romanesque canon. Frederick's replication of Norman architectural practices was based on the fact that they previously been used as a tool of empire, and it echoes his reuse of Roman remains. This article considers several aspects of Frederick's architectural program, including topographical layout and geographical positioning, his appropriation of Roman and Norman remains, and his adoption of classical and Norman artistic and engineering practices as nuanced processes of architectural spoliation and innovation.

Du détail décoratif au tableau pittoresque : la reconstruction de l’architecture gothique dans les romans d’Ann Radcliffe

According to Maurice Lévy, a Gothic novel is “Gothic” because its writing is closely related to architecture, the story being the very dramatization of a building. The ruined Gothic castle, abbey or monastery is indeed a cliché of the genre, the prerequisite decor for any real action to happen. The aim of this paper is to explore the aesthetic dimension of Gothic architecture in Ann Radcliffe’s novels, especially its pictorial and visual effects, from decorative emblematic details that stamp a building as “Gothic” to the creation of picturesque “tableaux” composed as true “paintings in words”. This literary reconstruction of Gothic architecture echoes the reappropriation of Gothic forms by the Gothic Revival. Radcliffe transfers this ornamental Gothic into the realm of the novel, adapting the ancient style of the “Goths” to modern dramatic purposes. Characteristic Gothic motifs such as the painted window or the arch are used to create a sense of dread or reproduce compositional effects. Drawing on pictorial models and the picturesque qualities attributed to Gothic architecture, Radcliffe’s descriptions generate “pictures”, literary equivalents of the “Landscapes with [Gothic] Ruins” popular in her days. Finally, by inserting Rosa-like banditti into architectural settings, the novelist fuses the Gothic Revival in architecture with a subgenre then popular in painting, to compose her own Gothic “Landscapes with Banditti”.

From Point Cloud Data to Structural Analysis Through a Geometrical hBIM-Oriented Model

The assessment of the structural behavior of historic masonry structures like Gothic cathedrals is an important engineering and architectural issue, because of the economic and cultural relevance of such buildings. In this article, we present a complete numerical methodology for point clouds processing, geometrical and parametric 3D modeling, and finite element structural analysis of the spire of the Cathedral of Senlis, France. Our work highlights the particular difficulties linked with digitization and geometrical modeling of highly complex Gothic structures, as well as the need to find compromises between quality and accuracy of extracted data used for geometrical modeling and structural analysis. The methodology enables the semi-automatic transformation of a three-dimensional points cloud, surveyed through terrestrial laser scanner, into a three-dimensional geometrical historic building information modeling (hBIM)-oriented model, and its use to propose a consistent 3D finite element mesh suitable for advanced structural analysis. A full software chain is integrated in the proposed numerical process, so as to use the most important data contained in the real geometry and accurately transposed in the point clouds. After a successful data processing step with 3DReshaper software that proved to be necessary for enhancement of point clouds, a semi-automated geometrical hBIM-oriented modeling step with Rhinoceros5 software and VisualARQ plugin has allowed the construction of a hybrid model by reverse engineering from the point clouds. This 3D model, containing both geometrical and parametric data of the structure, has been exported to the Hyperworks suite for finite element structural analysis under self-weight. Our computations focused on the estimation of the structure deformation and on the distribution of compression and traction stresses in all components of the complex structure. It is found that the spire is safe. Based on reliable and properly detailed results, our study provides significant information for understanding the behavior of the structure and potential damage monitoring.

Fundacje architektoniczne rodziny Rozdrażewskich – problemy stylu i znaczenia formy

The paper is a monograph of the churches founded by the Doliwita Rozdrażewski family, which make a significant percent of the total number of churches built in the region of Wielkopolska at the turn of the 17thcentury. Those churches, constructed under the supervision of Hieronim, Archbishop of Włocławek, and the Poznań Chamberlain Jan, have not been analyzed by scholars, and some of them have not been even mentioned in scholarly publications. The analysis presented in the paper allows one to consider the churches founded by the Rozdrażewski family in the context of the architecture of the region, Poland, and the neighboring countries. The features of the period, as well as a religious controversy among the family members, made it possible to approach a number of problems connected to contemporary artistic changes, such as the so-called “gothic style around 1600,” relations between Protestant and Roman Catholic architecture, and claims about the purposeful “archaism” of the architecture of the period, emulating the Romanesque or the Gothic style. Responding to the research postulates formulated by other scholars, the author proposed a new term, “early modern Gothic,” coined to replace other, ambiguous terms referring to the architecture of those times. Moreover, he proposed an innovative way of interpreting Gothic architecture of the early modern period, based on following its transformations from the end of the Middle Ages till the turn of the 17thcentury, which results in a claim that Gothic architecture continued until then.