Gothic Architecture Research Articles

Framing the Church: The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic Architecture by Maile S. Hutterer

Framing the Church: The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic Architecture by Maile S. Hutterer

Armonia spațialității pozitive și negative în sculptura artistului Ingo Glass

"Harmony of Positive and Negative Spaciousness in Ingo Glass sculpture. The aim of this article is to discuss issues regarding the ways spaciousness and harmony of positive and negative surfaces in Inglo Glass sculpture are valorized. The artist was born in 1941 in Timișoara, he studied at the Traditional School of Arts from Lugoj and then he attended the university in Cluj. Between 1967-71 he worked as curator at the Museum of Contemporary Arts from Galați and he established connections with visual artists from all over the country. Later on, between 1972-73 he worked as teaching assistant at the Architecture University from Bucharest and then he became cultural consultant at the German Culture House Friedrich Schiller. During this period, Ingo Glass created a Constructivist Art with metal structures developed vertically following the spatial pattern specific to the great Gothic cathedrals– the most famous work Septenarius was built in 1976 on the Danube boardwalk from Galați. Being forced by the political circumstances from the Socialist Republic of Romania, he emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1979, he moved to München where he worked for the Municipal Art Gallery and where he was integrated in the group of Concrete-Constuctivist Art artists. After 1989 he came back to Romania with different exhibitions and he created public monuments in Galați, Timișoara, Moinești and Lugoj. Then, in 1992 he presented his PhD thesis about the influence of Constantin Brâncuși Art over the 20th century sculpture. Between 1989-1998 the artist crystallized an original visual concept based on the usage of the basic geometric shapes in conjunction with the primary colours. Ingo Glass upgraded Bauhaus theory and he associated the square with blue, the triangle with yellow and the circle with red. By using shapes and primary colours the artists creates Concrete Art, a new symbolic universe, purely geometrical, the harmony of his entire work being given by the proportion and link between full and empty spaces. Expanded spaciousness specific to the Constructivst Art phase experiments the architecture-sculpture link and the monumentality of the metallic structures encourages the entrance to the central core of works. The open, non-material dimension forms the main volume of the sculpture, the empty space dominates the full shape and it outlines the effects of an unrated and irrational spaciousness. Balanced spaciousness specific to the Concrete Art phase experiments geometrical combinations, based on the basic shapes in positive and negative intersections, by the spaciousness and non-spaciousness link, the pace between full and empty spaces. The usage of the three basic geometrical shapes also influenced the combining vocabulary of these elements, and it even ensured the ordering and deduction of the empty space. The utopia of basic forms expresses tendencies towards positive irreductible forms of energy or negative forms through non-materiality, where the concepts of mass, weight, space and time are added. In each of his works, the artist used a proportion between the elements of the composition through a rational interpretation stimulated by the achievement of a geometrical order as the essential basis of tasks. The relation between positive and negative spaciousness appears constantly in the sculpture of the last century and the rhytm and sequence of its spatial effects are determined by a sense of proportion that involves an aesthetic of proportion. Thus, we can definitely say that the work of the artist Ingo Glass originally captures all these aspects of Contemporary Art. Keywords: sculpture, spaciousness, Ingo Glass, constructivism, Concrete Art. "

Dwa kościoły. Budownictwo kultowe w międzywojennych Niemczech jako przestrzeń modernistycznych eksperymentów

The time between WW I and II was a period of intensive development of church architecture in Germany. In the new situation after the defeat in WW I on the wave of Christian renewal movements, the concept of the church as a building corresponding to its functions, as an object expressing the character of religion and the vision of a congregation as a community in modern society was re -formulated. The dynamically developing church architecture was an area of intense experiments (especially in the 1920s.), creating new forms, as well as devising new iconography by Rudolf Schwartz, Otto Bartning, or Dominikus Böhm. The paper draws attention to a certain community of the main antagonized Christian and Protestant denominations on the example of two buildings erected on the eastern periphery of the then Germany (from 1945 constituting the western part of Poland): the Catholic Church of St Anthony in Schneidemühl (now: Piła, Hans Herkommer, 1928–1930) and the Protestant Cross-Church in Stettin (now: Szczecin, Adolf Thesmacher, 1929–1931). The first was built in a small town as a representative seat of the Prelature, a branch of the Catholic Church in the Protestant region, near the then border with (revived again) Poland. The building is a continuation of an innovative and conservative concept realized by Herkommer at the Frauenfriedenskirche in Frankfurt am Main (1927–1929), and is a testimony to the search for forms expressing the rationalist aspirations for the renewal of the Catholic Church, however without abandoning the main principles of the Tradition. For this purpose, Herkommer applies ‘industrial’ forms used in the Bauhaus circle, creating a clearly avant-garde building: not only in the local context of a small border town of eastern Germany, but also in the Catholic tradition of sacred architecture. Hiring an avant-garde architect and using modernist forms was the decision of one man: Monsignor Maximilian Kaller, the leader of the Prelature. The Church of the Cross in Szczecin was raised in a luxurious district of a great Protestant city, so it was the parish church of the Protestant elite. Although built of brick and clearly referring to the tradition of the Gothic architecture of this region, the Church of the Cross also reveals its striving for the maximum reduction of forms and the use of the language of abstraction. When building a Protestant church, Thesmacher resorted to forms applied primarily in Catholic architecture, especially to the forms used by Herkommer. Thesmacher created a facility expressing attachment to the local tradition and manifesting the modernity of the Evangelical church in Pomerania. As a result, both churches are a testimony to functionalist aspirations, although, of course, the functions differed from those on which, for example, the founders of the Bauhaus were focused.

Thomas De Coloswar. On The Esztergom Altarpiece and An Addition to His Oeuvre

AbstractThe large triptych in the Esztergom Christian Museum, painted in 1427 by Thomas de Coloswar, is a work of art typical of the International Gothic style, and includes formal elements that can be related to the schools of Bohemia, or better to the school of Nuremberg. The painting is analysed from an iconographic point of view, pointing out the most peculiar features, that may lead to an interpretation of the altarpiece also as an affirmation of the Catholic Eucharist doctrine. A new panel painting is added here to Thomas’ catalogue: a Vir Dolorum with Saint Francis receiving the stigmata in Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum), formerly attributed to the Master of the Lindau Lamentation (Meister der Lindauer Beweinung).

Nancy Wu. Review of "Framing the Church: The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic Architecture" by Maile S. Hutterer.

Nancy Wu. Review of "Framing the Church: The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic Architecture" by Maile S. Hutterer.

Średniowieczne zabytki w nowoczesnym kraju. Z dziejów dziewiętnastowiecznego polskiego dyskursu o architekturze

The work discusses the image of the medieval architectural heritage in the Polish public discourse of the nineteenth century. The author uses a corpus of texts published in academic journals and books to analyze the attitudes towards historical buildings in a period marked by intense development of the national cause and Romanticism, and later by the growing competition between the empires of Central Europe in the field of culture. The analysis shows growing esteem for the Gothic style, which was seen as having great potential for the future of architecture, as the well as general pessimistic attitude towards culture prevalent in the 1880s.

Sasanian architecture as viewed by the 19th century French architect Pascal-Xavier Coste

The 19th century French architect Pascal-Xavier Coste was one of the first European artists to recognize Sasanian architecture as a distinct and significant architectural style in Late Antiquity. He considered this style to be parallel to Byzantine and Romanesque architecture in the Eastern and Western Roman Empire, respectively. Sasanian architecture, according to Coste, belonged to a period of ‘decadence of the arts’ following the fall of the Roman Empire, during which small construction materials replaced large masonry blocks. Despite this general ‘decadence’, Coste attributed several architectural inventions to Sasanians and described their buildings as precursors to Arabic (Islamic) architecture which, in turn, played a fundamental role in the shaping of Gothic architecture. He saw Sasanian architecture as being characterized by the invention of ovoidal arches, domes, and use of small stones. The Palace of Ardashir in Firuzabad, the Khosrow Palace in Ctesiphon, and the Sarvestan monuments near Shiraz display the whole array of these architectural features according to Coste.

Gothic Architecture on the Western Fringe of the Empire. The Church of Our Lady in Tongeren (Belgium)

Abstract By combining carbon-14 dating of mortar, rereading known written sources and both archaeological and formal analysis, the construction history of the Gothic church of Our Lady in Tongeren can be thoroughly revised. Numerous similarities with religious architecture in Lorraine, the Rhineland, and the Meuse valley reveal the architectural historical significance of Our Lady’s church on the western fringe of the Holy Roman Empire. Inside the church, differences in design are related to the separate spaces used by canons, parishioners, brotherhoods, and the urban commune of Tongeren. The elaborate Rayonnant Gothic architecture of the eastern part of the church bears witness to the prestige associated with the church’s chapter, which claimed an episcopal past.

De las bóvedas nervadas al cañón con lunetos. Las iglesias de bóveda baída en el ámbito valenciano

<p>Los cambios arquitectónicos realizados desde el lenguaje gótico al clásico a partir de la irrupción del renacimiento, supuso la adopción de nuevos parámetros espaciales y compositivos que necesitaron del soporte de nuevos sistemas constructivos y geométricos. Es significativo el proceso evolutivo experimentado en los abovedamientos de las iglesias de la Corona de Aragón durante el recorrido que conduce desde las bóvedas nervadas propias del gótico hasta las bóvedas de cañón con lunetos barrocas. En el ámbito valenciano, y como un modelo intermedio entre los extremos del proceso, se realizaron unas pocas iglesias cubiertas con una sucesión de bóvedas baídas claramente adscribibles al lenguaje clásico. La solución geométrica de estas bóvedas basada en la esfera resultará clave.</p><span>En el texto se analizan cinco iglesias construidas con este sistema, y se muestran las soluciones adoptadas por los artífices para resolver cobertura de los diferentes templos con una geometría inédita hasta el momento.</span>

French architects and ‘églises grecques’: the discovery of Byzantine architecture in Greece, 1820s–1840s

This article attributes the discovery of Byzantine architecture in Greece to the writings of French architects from the 1820s to the 1840s. It aims to demonstrate how publications of Abel Blouet, André Couchaud, and others contributed to challenging the established portrayal of Greece as the exclusive locus of classical antiquity by bringing international attention to the country’s medieval architecture. A French interest in the Greek Byzantine heritage emerged in the early nineteenth century as part of the national and geopolitical interests of France in the eastern Mediterranean. The article analyses how Greek Byzantine architecture was distinguished as a historical category and placed within the broader French discourse on medieval architecture and national patrimony, with some scholars tracing the Gothic style back to Byzantine roots. Moreover, the article demonstrates that in Greece, by contrast, Byzantine architecture was treated with ambivalence, if not outright rejection as local intellectuals strongly adhered to the self-image of Greece as the land of the classics. The unanimous acceptance of Byzantine architecture as an object of national heritage and scholarly research would take place only in late nineteenth-century Greece.

Civil Gothic architecture in Catalonia, Mallorca and Valencia (13th-15th centuries)

This article is an introduction to the civil or secular Gothic architecture in the Catalan Lands (Catalonia, Mallorca and the region of Valencia) from the 13th to 15th centuries and its spread to Italy under the influence or dominion of the royal house of Barcelona. A general introduction to its formal and constructive features is followed by a sketch of the genesis and morphological diversity of some of the main building typologies, along with a presentation of the most important castles, palaces, urban homes, town halls and government buildings, mercantile exchanges and baths.

Un nuevo ejemplo de arquitectura gótica en Melilla: la desparecida Iglesia de San Miguel

El presente artículo intenta documentar y precisar diferentes aspectos sobre una arquitectura religiosa del siglo XVI: la iglesia de San Miguel de Melilla. Este edificio, ya desaparecido, presentaba la singularidad de ser uno de los escasos ejemplos del gótico tardío construidos en el continente africano, por lo que viene a sumarse a otras obras levantadas por españoles y portugueses en este contexto geográfico. Explicar su origen, principales vicisitudes y, finalmente, cómo fue demolida para levantar una iglesia nueva, son objetivos de este trabajo, así como documentar los vestigios todavía existentes de la antigua construcción que nos permiten apreciar algunas de sus características.

Numerical limit analysis-based modelling of masonry structures subjected to large displacements

In this paper, we introduce an extension of the piecewise rigid displacement (PRD) method for addressing the stability of a generic two-dimensional masonry structure subjected to large displacements. So far, the PRD method has been applied to simulate cracks in the reference configuration considering small displacements. Here, we investigate both cracks and internal forces in the presence of large foundation displacements, also providing an approach to estimate their maximum allowable value. The proposed extension allows accounting for the evolution of both mechanism and corresponding internal stress state due to the increasing prescribed displacements.After benchmarking the PRD analysis of a pointed arch with a physical test and results obtained through the Discrete Element Modelling software 3DEC, its strength/use is demonstrated on a complex numerical application, based on the cross-section of a Gothic cathedral. Also in this case, the PRD results are compared with a 3DEC analysis showing good agreement in terms of cracks evolution, internal stress states and displacement capacity. This paper shows the ability of the PRD method in solving in a few seconds a critical issue in the field of masonry structures that is, the effects of large foundation displacements, both in terms of mechanisms and forces, simultaneously.

“De la mà de un florentí” y “De mestre Marçal”. Los dibujos del pintor valenciano Joan Moreno (1382-1448) y el cuaderno de los Uffizi

A partir de la localización del testamento, inventario de bienes y almonedas posteriores tras el fallecimiento del pintor Joan Moreno en la ciudad de Valencia en 1448, se analiza la importancia del dibujo en los talleres del gótico internacional. La mención específica de dibujos del alemán Marçal de Sas (†1410) y de un florentino que podría ser Gherardo Starnina (c. 1354-1409-13) ofrece la posibilidad de analizar esta documentación en relación con el cuaderno de dibujos de los Uffizi (inv. 2264F-2281F, 18304F-18306F, 18324). Un repertorio de dibujos que se considera realizado en torno a los años 1400 en la ciudad de Valencia y que responde precisamente a las dos corrientes más importantes señaladas en la pintura gótica, la nórdica y la florentina.

The ambiguities of ancestry: antiquity, ruins and converging traditions of Australian Gothic Cinema

ABSTRACT ‘Gothic’ is identified as a prominent mode of Australian cinema since the 1970s. In commentary on Australian Gothic films, the aesthetic ancestry is often traced to literary conventions in colonial and pre-colonial British or European literatures. This article draws attention to the convergence of these literary and cinematic traditions and compares the prevalence of landscape as a Gothic figure in Australian films with the architectural elements of historical Gothic literature. The discussion proceeds through the British Gothic novel and its history as analogue of Gothic architecture of the time, and several recent accounts of ‘Australian Gothic’ cinema that invoke this history of the Gothic novel, and the dissonant description of ‘Australian Gothic’ in Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka’s account of Australian Revival films. Two recent productions, Celeste [Hackworth 2018. Australia: Unicorn Films] and the television remake of Picnic at Hanging Rock [Rymer, Kondracki and Brotchie 2018. TV Mini-Series. Australia: Amazon Studios/FremantleMedia/Screen Australia], are compared as recent parodies of Gothic aesthetics that foreground architectural features over landscape. It is argued that while it is important to identify antecedents, the colonial connotations of ancestry are ambiguous and potentially overpower attention to the generative visions in Australian Gothic cinema.

Villard de Honnecourt and Bar Tracery: Reims Cathedral and Processes of Stylistic Transmission, ca. 1210–40

Dating from approximately 1210 in the Champagne region of northern France, the emergence of bar tracery could be considered one of the most significant stylistic developments in the history of Western architecture. Over the subsequent decades, this innovation in window design provided the catalyst for a radical shift in design principles among medieval masons, its geometrical conception, forms, and technical composition having far-reaching consequences for the appearance of the architecture we call Gothic. Spread rapidly across France and beyond to England, Castile-Léon, and modern Germany by medieval masons, tracery quickly became the leitmotif of Gothic design, and was gradually transformed into a new mode of decoration which came to encompass the entire surface of the architectural edifice. Yet despite the widespread acknowledgment of bar tracery’s critical role within the stylistic narratives of early thirteenth-century European art, comparatively little attention has been focused on how its constitutive forms and ideas were transmitted over these long distances. Using a contemporary graphic and verbal response to bar tracery, the Villard de Honnecourt manuscript of ca. 1210–40, this article conducts a comparative analysis of three potential modes of stylistic transmission during this period: drawing, language, and personal communication via the memory. Through evaluating the relative limitations and potential of these communication media, it provides a starting point for reassessing the processes behind the dissemination of architectural ideas in northwestern Europe during the thirteenth century.

Islamicate Goods in Gothic Halls: The Afterlives of Palma De Mallorca’s Islamic Past

Abstract Following the conquest of Islamic Majorca in 1229, the Christian settler-colonizers embraced a purist identity that rejected altogether the island’s Islamic past and its artistic heritage. Visually, this new identity found its expression in the form of a clean, restrained, and mathematical gothic style. Palma’s towering gothic monuments embodied an ideological attempt at cultural erasure that has shaped Mallorquin identity to the present day. However, through the interstices of collective memory and material evidence it becomes clear that Islam and the Islamicate lingered beyond the singular point of the conquest through the continuity of local artistic production, the arrival of new Muslim artisans, imports of Islamicate objects, and the survival of monuments. The result was a hierarchical aesthetic system with two axes: the first consisted of the superimposed monumental, public, and official Gothic, while the second consisted of portable and less durable Islamicate objects that circulated in the gothic halls.

The Postulate of Clarification in Cheng Yi’s Commentary on the Book of Changes

Abstract Erwin Panofsky developed the postulate of clarification to explain the mental habit common to Gothic architecture and Western medieval scholasticism, but the postulate is equally applicable to the commentary tradition of Song-dynasty China. The commentary on the Book of Changes authored by Cheng Yi (1033–1107) provides a good example of how the Confucians of the Song dynasty took their concern for clarity to a recognizably medieval extreme. By looking at how Cheng Yi understands and foregrounds the clarity of the Book of Changes, we can begin to see both what was medieval about Song-dynasty China and why the medieval method continues to be viable for interpreters of the Book of Changes.

Ethics in Gothic Form: John Ruskin and Ethics of Entrepreneurship

In this paper we introduce John Ruskin’s writings on the value of gothic architecture, using his study of mediaeval gothic craftwork as a means to reflect on the ethical potential of new organizational form. Ruskin understood gothic architecture emerging from the co-operative, on-going and expressive activity of workers explicitly committed to cultivating growth that sustains community life, functionally, intellectually and emotionally. As such ‘gothic’ served as a template for ethical organization. In this paper we examine these ideas in the context of entrepreneurship, often viewed as individualistic, self-serving and opportunistic, so the antithesis of Ruskin’s gothic. In line with Ruskin’s call to examine ethics as lived human experience, we employ a phenomenological approach to understand entrepreneurship as a ‘gothic’ condition, focusing on the everyday activity of twenty entrepreneurs. Our findings suggest that whilst the entrepreneurs were alive to the importance of commercial return, they demonstrated further concern for, and commitment to, collective production and consumption activities that enabled them to create and judge the conditions for “good labour”. We argue Ruskin’s work on gothic offers a means to understand what it is about entrepreneurial work that makes us human, that which ‘gives to life’.

Exhibition Сzech and Кoman King Wenceslas IV: «Beautiful Style» of Gothic Art. On the 600th Anniversary of the Death of the Czech King

The article is devoted to the historical and cultural aspects of the development of Czech art in the late Middle Ages on the example of an exhibition held from August 16 to November 3 at Prague Castle, which was dedicated to the 600th anniversary of the death of the Czech and Roman King Wenceslas IV. The author of the article considers the significance of the Czech culture and sacred art in the context of the political and historical specifics of the development of medieval Bohemia and the features of the reign of Vaclav IV, who wasthe son of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Czech King Charles IV . Wenceslas IV is a complex and controversial figure in Czech history, who stood at the «crossroads» of epochs and cultures, around him various disputes persist in historiography up to our time. This article provides an overview of the nature of the sacred artifacts of culture and art presented at the exhibition «Czech and Roman King Wenceslas IV: «beautiful style» of Gothic art», as well as the characteristics of the artistic style , defined in terms of historical and cultural, internal and external political development of the Czech Republic, crosscultural dialogue of the Czech Republic with European countries on the background of the emerging religious controversy in the country. The work takes into account the features of the Late Gothic style in the Central Europe. On the example of the remarkable works of painting, sculpture, fragments of architectural monuments, decorative and applied art and manuscripts, first of all the monumental Wenceslas Bible, many of which were brought to Prague from various European Galleries and Castles of Poland, Germany, France, New York, as well as from private collections, can demonstrate the rise of Czech culture and art in the late XIV-early XV centuries, which was presented the process of cultural accumulation of the European style of the late Gothic, received Czech national artificial identity.