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| Bath Abbey fan vaulting in the Perpendicular Style, early 16th century. |
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The second part of the Gothic architecture post. A journey through the beauty of faith and the expression of peoples. Click for part 1.
We had to split Gothic architecture because the background took a lot of space. The thing about the Gothic is that it is heavily dependent on technical innovations in vaulting - it's the perfect alignment of structural, aesthetic, and spiritual logic that makes it such a powerful art form. But this meant explaining what vaulting is and how it works, and because the Gothic is pretty advanced, that took a while. We did get through the basics of Gothic in its native France - the beginnings at Saint-Denis, the High Gothic of Notre-Dame and Chartres, and the Rayonnant Gothic that filled interiors with stained glass light. Also the spread of the new style into Europe.
Sainte-Chapelle, 1238-1248, Paris. Rayonnant interiors could resemble stone cages of glass and light.
This post will look at two main things - the final phase of the French Gothic known as the Flamboyant and the English Gothic. The English took up the new style quickly, but developed their own version of it that shares principles with the continental types but looks different. Different enough and historically significant enough to need it's own look. Will start with the first two phases of the English to catch up with the continent, then look at the Flamboyant in Europe and Perpendicular in England because they overlap. Since the origins and technical aspects were covered in detail in the last post, we can jump right in. If you're unclear on vaulting or some of the terms, take a look [click for link].
But while this is a long journey through some glorious architecture, beauty isn't the only point. Art is the expression of a culture, and the different Gothics express the unique nature of the West - a collection of distinct nations with their own attitudes sharing common abstracts and one ultimate reality in God.
The Romanesque preceded the Gothic in England as in France and became widespread after the Norman Conquest in 1066. Starting in the 1070s most major religious sites got big new buildings in the "Norman Style". These had the same kind of massive walls and piers, small openings, and round arches as the French Romanesque. A lot of it was rebuilt in the Gothic style, but enough survives to get a feel for it.
Ely Cathedral's nave, begun in 1083, is a good example:
You can see the heavy piers and massive round arches. The ceiling was never vaulted in stone. The wooden barrel vaulted version seen here was a 19th century addition designed by architect Sir George Gilbert and painted by Henry Styleman Le Strange and Thomas Gambier Parry.
Close-up of the thick walls and windows.
Le Strange and Parry's ceiling decoration is also worth a look.
Heavy Norman Romanesque groin vaults along the aisle of the nave. And the thick piers from another angle.
This is typical of the sort of Romanesque that immediately preceded the Gothic in England.
Ely is typical of another English phenomenon as well - the coexistence of different styles in one place. This continues into the Gothic. Many of these buildings were constructed over long periods of time - centuries - or had portions that burned or collapsed and needed replacement. Using the style of the day without concern for what was there already was the norm. This means looking at different portions for examples of a given style, rather than taking in the entire structure. Salisbury Cathedral (mostly 1220 to 1258), would be the exception, and we'll look at that one. It's why it turns up in all the surveys.
Gloucester Cathedral, built between 1089 and 1499 is a good example. Just looking at this photo, you can see the different sections built in visibly different sizes and styles.
English Gothic came a bit later to England and lasted longer, morphing into a Tudor style in the 16th century before picking up Italian Renaissance influence. It started with churches, then spread to noble residences, universities, and public buildings. It is also divided into three broad phases that roughly correspond with the French ones in spirit, though they look different. And like the French, the lines between them are blurry.
Early English Gothic (around 1180–1275) corresponds with French High Gothic
Decorated Gothic (around 1250–1380) corresponds with French Rayonnant Gothic
Perpendicular Gothic (around 1350–1520) corresponds with French Flamboyant Gothic
The basics are similar - pointed arches, rib vaulted roofs supported by flying buttresses, big stained glass windows, and ornaments like spires, tracery and so forth.
The basic parts of Gothic architecture - structure and ornament. These are consistent in England and France and the rest of Europe.
It's the way that they are adapted, organized, and used that distinguishes national versions of the style.
The Normans were great builders in stone, and after the conquest, officials set about upgrading the foundations that they took over. The earlist example of a rib vault over a full-sized nave anywhere was at Durham Cathedral under the prince-bishop William de St-Calais, an appointee of William the Conqueror. William's grand replacement for the old Saxon church was started in 1093, though he died long before its completion. The intent was a structure worthy of the remains of St. Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede that are interred there. The nave vaults were completed in the 1130s with rib vaults, a revolutionary approach that foreshadowed the Gothic.
Rib vaults of Durham. The heavy Romanesque stonework of the nave resembles Ely, which was built in the same style.
The vaults allow for a clerestory windows, though smaller than the Gothic.
For contrast, the wooden ceiling of Peterborough cathedral, installed between 1230 and 1250 is a good example of what the stone vaulting of Durham replaced.
This is the sort of ceiling that Ely would have had as well. It's the only one of its kind surviving in England.
The challenge in summing up the English Gothic is that the cathedrals - the main sites for Gothic design - are really varied in appearance. So the best we can do is general tendencies. The first phase of the English Gothic is just called the Early English Gothic (1180-1250) or the Lancet Gothic for the shape of the pointed arches. The design concepts were basically the same as the French - lighten the vaults and shift the weight onto supports to make taller, more open structures, but the proportions and feel were different. Early English proportions were more horizontal that vertical, both in decoration and in actual dimensions. Walls tended to be thicker and heavier - closer to the Romanesque.
Salisbury Cathedral is a good illustration of this because its relatively short construction time means most of it is Early Gothic.
Salisbury Cathedral, 1220 to 1258, except the chapter house in 1263, the 14th century facade, and the tower and spire in 1320.
Some differences with the French High Gothic are obvious right away. Ignoring the tall tower which was added later, the building is proportionately much wider then it is high and seems to sprawl over a larger area. On the whole the English Gothic wasn't as oriented towards height but was longer and with longer transepts as well.
The emphasis on horizontal dimensions is obvious on the plan. The East end (above the crossing - where the more complex vaults of the tower are) is about as long as below.
There is even a second smaller pair of transepts that never appeared on the French cathedrals. Not all English ones had them, but Salisbury isn't the only one that did. This contributes to the sprawling perimeter effect.
French apses - the very eastern tip - are almost always round, but here it's a square chapel.
The ribbed vaulting is the same - marked by X shapes.
The view down the nave below shows the great length relative to the height. The more complicated vaulting under the tower can be seen as well as the distant blue stained glass of the lower apse chapel.
Looking down the nave, the decoration enhances the sense of length. The Gothic system has a natural verticality with tall columns and pointed rib vaults. But in the French version, there are moldings that run from the vaults to the columns and to the floor.
Here's Chartres for a contrast - it's a little older, being mostly built between 1194 and 1220. This picture of the nave wall gives a good sense of the vertical effect from the decoration running from the vaults to the floor between each bay.
And the same effect when viewed down the nave. This gives the interior a visual unity defined by a series of rising lines that align with the structure - vaults and supports. It makes a modular even rhythm all the way down and amplifies the height of the vaults.
Now look at the wall of the Salisbury nave. The same structural parts are there -the rib vaults, the triforium gallery in the middle, the supporting columns, the pointed or "lancet" vaults that gave the Lancet Gothic its name. But the vertical emphasis is gone.
The Gothic has inherent verticality from tall naves and pointed arches. But Salisbury breaks the continuous rises seen at Chartres. Vaults end in short engaged columns that don't reach the clustered columns between triforium bays. The lower arcade doesn't communicate with the upper reaches at all. The effect is stacked horizontal rows than vertical modules.
Color adds to the effect. English builders used dark Purbeck marble for highlights. Here it's on the lower columns, triforium and arch terminal columns, and straight lines called stringcourses below the clerestory and triforium. The dark colors sharpen the appearance of vertical rows.
The effect is clearest when you look down the nave from an elevated position:
The black Purbeck marble columns and straight stringcourses makes almost a perspective meeting at the end of the nave.
The same horizontal effect can be seen in the nave of Wells Cathedral, built between 1192 and 1239. The rest of the cathedral was built later in different styles, so we'll just consider the nave.
Wells Cathedral, 1176-1490, nave complete by 1239.
The view down the nave from the crossing to the entrance shows the same six-part rib vaults and horizontal emphasis as Salisbury. The Purbeck marble wasn't used for added emphasis here, but it's easy to tell the difference from Chartres and the French.
The walls also feel heavier with less emphasis on the windows.
Plan of Wells Cathedral from Ward and Lock's Illustrated Historical Handbook to Wells Cathedral, London, Ward, Lock & Co., 1889
Looking at the plan, it's easy to tell the Early English nave and transepts from the later choir and East end with its more elaborate vaulting and curved forms. This is typical of the way that the English buildings were constructed over time in very different styles. Salisbury is the exception not the norm.
The main feature of the Early English Gothic is the pointed or lancet arch. This is where its other name - the Lancet Gothic - comes from. Without the influence of Suger and the Royal Abbey, the same emphasis on big windows and colored glass isn't there, although the stained glass comes along soon enough.
The Galilee Porch added to the front of Norman Ely Cathedral is another good example - both of the long thin lancet style and the way English cathedrals are such stylistic mash-ups.
This is the main entrance into the cathedral. English cathedrals' fronts are also have a lot more variety than the French. They also differ, but tend to have the same basic configuration with two towers and a rose window in the middle. Ely has this projecting Lancet Gothic porch in front of a castle-like Romanesque tower.
The close-up shows the tall, thin lancet windows and doorways. Notice how blind pointed arches cover the exterior as a decoration.
The Early English Gothic loved the pointed arch for aesthetic as much as structural reasons.
The entrance from the porch to the nave has the same pointed lancet openings. The rib vaults of the ceiling are visible at the top.
It shows another feature of the Early English Gothic as well - the addition of decoration. The teeth cut into the arch, the decoration in the mouldings, and the diapering - addition of surface patterns - on the flat surface above to doors are come into vogue with this style.
Cusped arches - arches curved into a trefoil shape like these ones inside the Galilee Porch - also appear in the Early English Gothic, though much less frequently than pointed ones. The trefoil shape was symbolic of the Trinity.
Compared to the French High Gothic, the Early English shows similar construction principles, but much more individual variation and less concern with harmonizing structure and aesthetics. It's more ideosyncratic, with lots of different configurations and willingness to graft very different buildings onto each other over long periods of time. Ornament is more diverse as well - the variety of lancet doors and windows and things like cusped arches don't enliven French buildings. In general, the English emphasize length over height - the sprawling appearance of their cathedrals helps explain why it was so easy to keep adding and extending what was there.
Like York Minster, 1220-1472. Note the different styles and heights, mismatched towers, extra transepts, and sprawling length.
This building includes all the phases of the English Gothic.
The second phase of English Gothic is called the Decorated Gothic, and roughly corresponds to the French Rayonnant. It lasts for about a century - roughly 1250-1350 - and is subdivided into two movements. The Geometric style from about 1250–90 and the Curvilinear style from 1290–1350. There are general changes, but overall the style is defined around changes in window design, especially tracery.
Rayonnant rose window, Soissons Cathedral, 13th century
The bar tracery dividing the window is very visible here.
Where the Decorated is closest to the Rayonnant is in the use of bar tracery in windows, and also on other surfaces. Windows get bigger and increasingly elaborate patterns develop. As with the Early English Gothic the buildings don't look like the French as much as approach design and decoration in comparable ways.
The Geometric is the first phase of Decorated, with the earliest form of bar tracery windows. This involves applying tracery to divide the window into two lights, then topping them with a simple geometric form - the circle.
The East end of Westminster Abbey from the 1240s is an early example. The two big windows on the left of the photo are two light Geometric bar tracery windows topped by a circle. The circle is foiled - surrounded by smaller circular lobes - but the plain, simple geometry of the design is still clear.
Pay no mind to the ornate part on the right. This was added later in the elaborate Perpendicular Style.
The West facade of the ruined Binham Priory in Norfolk is another early one, dating between the 1230s and 1244.
Here you can see smaller versions without their glass on the sides and what would have been a huge window bricked up in the middle of the facade. Same configuration - two lights and a foiled circle.
Similar forms appear on the inside, elaborated by with various foil, lobed, dagger, and other ornamental embellishments. The Geometric was scaleable to larger window openings by adding more lights and circles. At Lichfield Cathredral, there are foiled double arches topped with circles in the triforium but three light, three circle windows visible. Note also how more of a vertical element appears in the decoration and the vaults are becoming more elaborate. Complicated vaulting and more emphasis on verticality are also parts of the Decorated Style.
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Lichfield Cathedral, nave, 1260s.
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The extra ribs in the vaults are called tiercerons, and were initially put there for structural reasons. Remember that the ribs are arches that support the weight of the roof. Adding tiercerons increases the support and makes the vaults stronger. In time, these will become increasingly elaborate and morph into a decorative feature as well as a structural one.
The window in the Angel Choir at Lincoln Cathedral is a great example of large scale elaborate Geometric Style. Here, the there are eight lights divided into groups of four with a total of thirteen circles in the arch above.
Stained glass window, Lincoln Cathedral Angel Choir, 1256-1280
As with the French Rayonnant, the use of bar tracery allowed for windows were the most of the surface was glass.
This is the Geometric at its most elaborate.
The rest of the Lincoln Angel Choir shows early Decorated features. The vaults are more elaborate ten-part creations. Increasing the number of tiercerons (extra vaults) strengthens the roof, but it also takes on a decorative element.
The vertical elements running down aren't continuous to the floor like at Lichfield, but are more pronounced than in the Early English Gothic. And the magnificent Geometric window dominates the interior.
Intersecting tracery can be considered a late Geometric development, but it's just as much a transition into the Curvilinear. It's a bit different from both, but not significant to define a phase of its own. Since it is based on the repetition of simple arcs, Geometric is the better fit, but the move away from circular shapes foreshadows the Curvilinear.
Intersecting tracery window, 1290-1310, St Wulfram's, Grantham, Lincolnshire
St. Wulfram's is like a tracery museum, with windows from pretty much every major period. This is a good example of intersecting tracery, where the mullions split and arc in opposite directions to make an intersecting pattern. This one is elaborated with pointy cusps.
Intersecting tracery was relatively quick and expensive since the bars followed the same radius as the arch and didn't need as custom sculpture.
As the 13th century wound down, the clear logic of the Geometric became replaced with more complex and fantastical forms. These were still based on circular geometry, but the circles, were replaced with more complex arcing shapes. Same for the repetitive simplicity of the intersecting.
Reticulated tracery is probably the first style that can properly be called Curvilinear, though it has transitional elements. The pattern derived from a grid of circles:
Reticulated patterns are based on tracing flowing lines in arrays of touching circles. These are called ogee shapes.
The ogee arch or shape is made of pairs of convex and concave curves - the convex flows into the concave to make a much sharper point than the usual Gothic pointed arch with it's two convex curves meeting at the top. Ogees become a central feature of the Decorated Gothic.
Five light window with textbook reticulated tracery from the Church of All Saints, Icklingham, Suffolk from around 1320.
Here the ogee shapes are cusped to elaborate them further. But the basic pattern is easy to make out.
East window with reticulated tracery, around 1330, Church of St Mary, Dennington, Suffolk.
And a really fine example of reticulated tracery on a small church. The cusped ogees resemble flickering flames and give a modest building a spectacular appearance.
Experimentation with the reticulated leads to the next phase of Decorated Gothic: flowing tracery.
Variation on a reticulated window with an ogee octofoil in a circle, 14th century, Church of St Andrew, Westhall, Suffolk
Another modest building with a fantastic window. Here a simple three light reticulated pattern is altered by the addition of a cusped circle. The Flowing style would keep the Curvilinear forms, but move away from repeating patterns.
Note the ogee arches in the lights as well. The overall window is a Gothic arch, but the mullion arches recurve convex to concave to make fancier ogee shapes.
The full flowering of the Curvilinear phase of Decorated Gothic comes with Flowing tracery. The forms are based on curves and ogees, but the repetitive patterns have been replaced with intricate twisting original patterns of tremendous variety. This makes it hard to sum up.
Some of the common Decorated shapes.
Here are a pair of examples, both from the late 14th century. See if you can spot all the shapes in the diagram above. Note how the style is the same, but the patterns impossible to describe.
Late Decorated Gothic window with Flowing tracery, late 14th century, Church of St Mary, Snettisham, Norfolk
Seven-light Decorated Gothic south transept window with Flowing tracery, late 14th century, Church of St Peter and St Paul, Algarkirk, Lincolnshire
Flowing tracery is hard to describe because the patterns are never the same. Ogees flow and curve together like plant stems and leaves. Cusps create shapes called daggers.
It isn't a fixed pattern but a style that you recognize.
Other than the windows, the other main features of the Decorated Style are the increasing number of ribs in the vaults and a bit more vertical emphasis within the same structure. There isn't the same skeletal emphasis or two-dimensional cage of glass effect that we saw in the last post in the French Rayonnant, although the big Flowing tracery windows do start to take up whole walls. We'll use Decorated nave of York Minster - the largest of the English cathedrals - to sum up the basics. Then we'll make some observations about what this might mean culturally.
Diagram of a Gothic pinnacle. The pinnacle is extremely common in Gothic decoration in England and continental Europe. Technically, the pinnacle is the long spire itself. The decorative piece on top is called the finial and the little hook-shaped ornaments on the corners are called crockets.
All of these are typical Gothic ornaments.
York Minster was started in 1220 and consecrated in 1472. The transepts finished in the 1250s in Early English Gothic. The Chapter House was built from the 1260s to 1296. The nave was started in the 1280s with the vaulting done in 1360 in the Decorated Style. The choir was finished around 1405 in the Perpendicular, and towers between 1420 and 1472. This means all the main phases of the English Gothic are present here.
York Minster view and plan. The squarish appearence resembles Salisbury. The different stages of building are clear on the plan, where different patterns of vaulting are shown by the lighter lines.
The nave on the left is built in the Decorated Style. The Perpendicular choir on the right (East) has the most intricate vaulting. We'll look at the nave and facade.
The facade of York Minster is a great Decorated exterior. This cathedral follows the basic French facade design of paired towers, but the detailing is Decorated. The first giveaway is the tracery - the Flowing style in the windows and the tower openings. If this were French, it's more likely that the central window would be a rose rather than a huge lancet.
York Minster facade. Most of this was built in the Decorated Style in the early 1300s. The towers were added about a century later - the different color stones are visible and there are stylistic differences in the proportion of the openings and the vertical panels in the tower ones. This is consistent with their Perpendicular Style. We're looking at the main facade though - especially the Curvilinear tracery windows and the open tracery in the gable over the big central one.
The great West Window with its distinct Flowing tracery dates to 1338,
The great West window is known as the Heart of Yorkshire for the distinct heart shape in its Flowing tracery.
This is a masterpiece of Decorated style stained glass.
As the name suggests, the detail of the decoration on a Decorated Gothic building increases. Here's the entrance arch on the York Minster facade with a modified Geometric two opening door. But now even the decorations - like the foils in the arches - are decorated. The detail shows the detail of the sculpture all over the facade.
Looking down the nave we see the great length and more Decorated features. The windows are larger than the Early English Gothic - like the Rayonnant, a result of more confident builders and the use of bar tracery. The vertical emphasis is clearer, with continuous shafts running from the base of the vaults across the triforium to the floor along each pier. This counters the horizontal flow we saw at Wells and Salisbury with something closer to the French modular rhythm. But the vaulting undermines that with a more complex pattern than we've seen in a ceiling.
This elaboration of the vaulting needs a closer look. We saw the number of ribs increasing at Lichfield and the Angel Choir at Lincoln, but not the extra ribs forming a sort of web-like pattern that we see here.
The York Minster nave has rib vaults with tiercerons, but new ribs are visible too. The longitudinal ridge rib runs down the center and transverse ridge ribs cross the nave from the top of each window arch, intersecting the longitudinal one at 90 degrees. These hold the angled tiercerons apart and keep them from being pushed over by the weight of the roof.
A new kind of rib appears called Lierne ribs, from the French for lien - to bind or hold. This is any rib that isn't a ridge rib and doesn't spring from the top of the column shaft. These don't define the shape of the roof, but lie on the ceiling. Initially they spaced the main vaults and bound them together, but slowly evolve into a form of decoration.
The joins where all these vaults meet are called bosses, and decorating them adds to the growing complexity of appearance of a Lierne-vaulted ceiling.
The Decorated style wasn't only used for vaulting rectangular naves. Between 1275 and 1310 the chapterhouse of Wells Cathedral was built in the Geometric version of the Decorated. This octagonal structure was designed around a central column with a tremendous number of tiercerons fanning out in anticipation of what will become the Perpendicular fan vault. We can't go into all the variations on this, but Wells is worth a look.
If you compare the English and French Gothic styles through the first two stages of each, it is possible to draw some conclusions. The similarities are pretty clear - rib vaults allow for bigger and more splendid structures with pointed arches and stained glass windows. The purpose - to build as beautifully and impressively as possible to honor and worship God - is also the same. What's different are the details.
The French opt for a relatively standardized modular skeleton with an emphasis on soaring height. The cathedrals build on the innovations of each predecessor until Bauvais shows the limits of that system. Then the move it towards lightening the appearance, flattening the interior and maximizing the window space - the Rayonnant is also pretty consistent.
Amiens Cathedral was built over the 13th century. The exact dates are uncertain.
It's a "standard" French Gothic cathedral - soaring vaults, strong vertical elements, and quadripartite (four-part) rib vaults running down the nave in neat rhythmic clarity.
In England, there is way more variety. Long sprawling buildings built in stages over the centuries with considerable regional variation. The seem less centally planned and more ad hoc. More ideosyncratic responses to changing circumstances. There are additions and new parts on French buildings - Saint-Denis is a fine example. But there's nothing like York Minster or Gloucester where you walk through one stylistic area after another like a real life architectural history museum.
Geoffrey de Noiers, Asymmetrical "Crazy" vaults in St. Hugh's choir, 1192-1210, Lincoln Cathedral
The skewed vaults in the Lincoln choir are the first uses of tierceron ribs to create decorative vaults. Decorative vaulting would become a trademark feature of the later English Gothic. There is nothing so wonderfully ideocyncratic and one-off in French Gothic cathedrals.
The Band likes to repeat this simple maxim - art is an expression of a culture. If that is the case, what sort of cultural difference do these Gothics express?
Consider the traditional legal and political attitudes of the two - in the age before England sold its soul and cucked to globalism. English tradition was built on the idea of common law and parliamentary government - the Magna Carta raised the idea of restrictions on royal power in the 13th century while France was pushing monarchical absolutism in the 17th. The Band has pointed out that the Magna Carta was a power-sharing agreement between the aristocracy and monarchy, and not the proto-democracy the ignorant and agenda-driven like to pretend it is. But it is still a decentralization for more local authority. Likewise a common law tradition built on local precedent.
Just look at the variety in English facades: Wells Cathedral by 1240; Ripon Cathedral by 1220; Peterborough Cathedral by 1238, York Minster by 1350, Exeter Cathedral, 1340-1470; Gloucester Cathedral, 1430
York resembles the two tower French model, but the rest are doing their own thing. There is nothing like this local variety in the French Gothic. Variations, but within a more consistent framework.
Meanwhile, French Gothic is more systematic, modular, and driven by adherence to a royal precedent. There is no English equivalent to the Royal Abbey architecturally, or the influence of early adopter Notre-Dame. Westminster plays a similar role politically, but it's an architectural potpourri, and didn't set the tone for anything building wise. The English Gothic was more organic, adapted by local architects and builders with more freedom and flexibility. We don't want to put too much on a loosely suggestive comparison, but the forms of Gothic seem to express national attitudes towards central control and personal freedom. To quote an earlier post where we contrast Anglo and continental attitudes philosophically:
Staying general, we can contrast the English notion of "rights" as the result of an inductive process, meaning developing organically from the bottom up, with the French idea of central control. Not surprisingly, the philosophical bent of the English Enlightenment is likewise different, tending towards practical, empirical ideals rather than absolutist rationalism.
The Gothic isn't just a reminder of the beauty that is possible when techne is applied to the glory of god...
The final stage of Gothic is called the Flamboyant in France and on the Continent, while the English version is known as the Perpendicular. Once again, the details are different, but the overall spirit similar, since both move to an decorative extreme. In each case, aspects of the preceding phase - Rayonnant and Decorated respectively - are embellished and exaggerated to the point of hiding structural elements at times. This is cosmetic, since in both cases the structural principles remain the same as always. After them, the Gothic gives way to new Renaissance styles - an Italianate import from Italy in France and the Tudor Style in England.
Ambroise Havel, The Church of St. Maclou, Rouen, 1500-14
Fantastic if late example of Flamboyant Gothic. The Gothic structural elements are all there - the flying buttresses holding up the roof vaults are easy to see. But the whole thing is a mass of pinnacles, crockets and open tracery that makes the structure hard to see if you don't know what you're looking for.
The spire is especially elaborate - like a giant perforated pinnacle.
From street level it's even more of a mass of decoration. The deep porch is divided bu buttresses that fan out at angles rather than projecting 90 degrees from the facade, creating a circular entrance that contradicts the planar structure of the actual building front.
Projecting gables with openwork tracery further detract from the sense of solid structural mass.
Pinnacles are relatively tall and protrude all over.
It gets even more detailed as you get closer. The Flamboyant gets its name from the ornate tracery ,with double curving, interweaving lines that resemble flames. The word flamboyant means "flame-like". This is visible in the openwork in the gable above the main door.
As you move around, the appearance and relationship of the parts keeps changing. This movement also resembles the flickering of flames.
Flamboyant decoration completely detaches from the structural elements of the building and takes on
a spatially independent life of its own. The decorative profusion and energy parallels the International Gothic painting and sculpture that we'll look at in the next and final Gothic post.
Notre-Dame de l'Épine, 1405-1527, L'Épine, Marne
Another Flamboyant facade - earlier and not quite as ethereal as St. Maclou. It helps to see the evolution - the open spires, abundance of pinnacles, and flame-like tracery. The Flamboyant included features from the English Gothic, like the ogee arch gables and the reticulated tracery in the blind arched on the facade.
The Flamboyant also appears on secular architecture.
Roger Ango and Roulland le Roux, Parliament of Normandy, 1499-1508, Rouen
This provincial parlement - now a courthouse - is a hybrid of the Flamboyant Gothic and the new French Renaissance style. The square windows are Renaissance. The intricate spire and tracery decoration is Flamboyant.
The flame-like tracery of the Flamboyant worked well in windows. We saw the Saint-Chapelle in the last post as a signature example of the Rayonant Gothic. But the chapel was modified in the 15th century and a Flamboyant Rose window added around 1490.
The stylistic difference between the Flamboyant rose and the linear 13th century Rayonnant windows is easy to spot. There is a similarity between the flame-like tracery of the former and the Flowing tracery of the English Curvilinear. We suspect that this may have been some influence flowing back to France.
And a close-up of the rose.
Variations of the Flamboyant appear all over Europe - with their own regional characteristics and names. It isn't possible to cover them in a blog post and this one is running long as it is. So we'll have to make due with a couple of examples before finishing with the English Perpendicular.
The huge Milan Cathedral was started in 1386 and construction dragged on for centuries.
The finished product is mostly Flamboyant with some English Perpendicular elements thrown in. It's one of the largest churches in the world, but the proportions are odd - too wide for the height - and the inclusion of Classical elements like pedimented round-arched windows are incongruous. A consequence of the length of the building process but out of place.
It's more impressive than attractive.
St Anne's Church, 1495-1500, Vilnius, Lithuania
Another regional variation, this one on a more modest scale. It combines the Flamboyant with something called the Brick Gothic that was found in Northeastern Europe.
The ogee shapes, insubstantial looking facade and prominent pinnacles are all Flamboyant elements.
The same holds for the secular buildings. The Brussels Town Hall in Belgium was built over several decades, starting with the East wind in 1420 and with Jan van Ruysbroek's 315 ft tower finished by 1454. The style of the tower is called Brabantine Gothic, a regional variation with some similarities to the Flamboyant.
The pinnacles and openwork are familiar features.
The last phase to consider is the English equivalent of the Flamboyant - the Perpendicular Style that first appeared in the mid 14th century and lasted into the 16th. Its mane, as you might expect, comes from the emphasis on the vertical, especially in the tracery of the large windows. Verticality and larger bar tracery windows were noted in the Decorated period - those become even more prominent here. Decorated vaulting also gets elaborated, with Lierne vaults turning into really intricate patterns and fan vaults making their appearance.
A good early look at this new style can be had at Gloucester Cathedral, where the choir was remodeled in an early Perpendicular from the 1330s to 1350s.
Note the vertical emphasis along the walls and in the Great East Window from the 1350s. The window tracery doesn't flow like the Decorated, but is predominantly vertical with smaller, lighter mullions dividing the lights. And the lierne vaulting has become extremely complex, with many ribs that are not structural but purely decorative. The flattened arches along the walls are a deviation from the lancet shape, but add to the rectilinear feel.
Take a look up the Great East Window into the vaults:
It's not hard to see where the Perpendicular name comes from. This is the phase of English Gothic where the reltively massive aesthetic of the architecture gives way to something approaching the cage of glass that we saw in France from the Rayonnant style. It's a good reminder that while the English and French phases tend to align in thematic ways, there are differences in emphasis between them. Just as the cage of glass comes to England in the third rather than the second phase, the surving flowing tracery comes to France in the third.
The Great East Window is a great example of Perpendicular tracery. Notice how the Flowing tracery is pretty much gone and the Geometric reduced to a few small cusped circles. At 72' x 40' this huge window is about the size of a tennis court!
Instead of Curvilinear upper portions, Perpendicular windows are divided into more rectangular compartments that stand vertically. This is called panel tracery.
And the lierne vaults with their Perpendicular tracery clerestory windows.
It's in the ceilings where the thematic similarity to the Flamboyant is closest, because this is where the Perpendicular decoration obscures the structural elements of the building. Perpendicular architecture tends to remain structurally lucid, but the vaulting multiplies decorative liernes and bosses that blend in with the actual structural supports.
Gloucester also introduces a new Perpendicular feature - the fan vault. These really do come with a structural change - a return to the old Romanesque way of building solid vaults, then setting the ribs into them, rather that building a supportive lattice of ribs then laying the roof masonry on top. The effect is stunning, structurally confusing to the eye, and uniquely English. The first fan vaults appear in the cloister (or courtyard) of Gloucester, where the low height and small square bays made experimenting easier.
Thomas de Cantebrugge, Cloister, Gloucester Cathedral, 1351-1377
The cloister doesn't look that radical from the outside. There is Perpendicular tracery in the arcade openings and buttresses that show the interior is vaulted.
The design was complete by 1377 but construction continued until 1412.
It's the interior that's remarkable.
The ribs have multiplied into conoid shaped splaying off the supports like the fans that give the vaults their name. The liernes have been replaced with complex tracery creating intricate patterns.
A close look at the "fan" shows a mixture of ornamental features from the history of English Gothic, from foiled circles to Perpendicular tracery patterns. What's changed is that this intricate vault isn't the main structural support. The thicker tracery offers some support, but the vault is solid masonry - an older technology applied with new flair.
King's College Chapel of the University of Cambridge is a masterpiece of mature Perpendicular Gothic English architecture, with a consistency that belies it's long construction history. The chapel was built between 1446 and 1515, with the windows unfinished until 1531. This was during the draining Wars of the Roses, so it's not surprising resources were limited.
Note the basic proportions - still relatively long for the height and squarish. The verticality of the Perpendicular isn't so much in the actual height of the buildings but in the appearance of the ornament. Rows of buttresses and corner towers ending in pinnacles run from the ground up in a continuous rise. The windows are large, with Perpendicular tracery instead of the Curvilinear styles. Flatter arches give more of a rectangular feel. Compared to the contemporary Flamboyant, the outsides are plain with clear structural logic.
Same goes with the facade. A fairly plain exterior other than the decorations on the towers and along the roofline, with an overall vertical orientation. Note the huge window though - the Perpendicular comes closer to the cage of glass.
The tower of Merton College, Oxford, built between 1424 and 1450 is another good example of a Perpendicular exterior. Note the relatively plain walls, large openings with panel tracery, and decorated roofline, with pinnacles carrying continuous vertical lines up beyond the building.
It's the interior where King's College Chapel shines. The largest fan vaults in the world spread over huge Perpendicular windows.
You can see one of the aesthetic problems that the architects faced here. The nave is much wider than the space between the arches, so the conic vaults didn't fit neatly into the space available. Each fan is cut off on the sides to fit the one next to it and still meet along the center. The splendor of the effect is such that you don't really notice.
The light coming in through the huge windows is distracting. Note how the window mullions continue into the tracery along the lower portion of the walls and how the supporting piers are strong unbroken shafts. This is the verticality - the perpendicularity - that gives the Perpendicular its name.
And the panel tracery of the huge East window. This was only finished in 1531 and is a magnificent example of Perpendicular stained glass. Note the long, thin lights and lack of Curvilinear effects. The closest the English come to the Rayonnant cage of glass. You can also see the flattening of the lancet arch.
The inspiration and effect are similar, thought the style slightly different.
We'll end the presentation with the most fantastic of Perpendicular fan vaults, the pendant fan vault built between 1503 and 1509 over Henry VII's Chapel in Westminster Abbey.
Dangling pendants in the center of the fans add to the overall splendor of the ceiling. This is the Perpendicular at its most magnificent.
When the British revived the Gothic in the 19th century as the style for their new parliament, it was the Perpendicular that they chose.
Charles Barry and Augustus W. N. Pugin, Palace of Westminster, 1840-70, London
This was a long post, but we managed to finish off the French Gothic and cover the main phases of the English. We also raised the possibility of national culture expressed through the different Gothics, with the English creating a more inductive, bottom up version and the French a more centralized top-down one. Whether this holds as well for the late stages is hard to say - Flamboyant hasn't been researched as well so the information isn't available for ready conclusions. The buildings are also less monumental and influential. And as a late stage, it is appearing as society is changing into the rigid monarchism that will open the door to the Renaissance. These points are aloo applicable to the Perpendicular, especially the last two.
Deanery Tower, 1495, Hadleigh, Suffolk, England
Although the Perpendicular Gothic would stick around for a few more decades, it's clear from this early Tudor Building that things were changing.
It's clearly "medieval" but there isn't much of the Gothic.
But we can see how the Gothic contains both the fundamental nature of the arts of the West - technical skill or techne + higher Truth or episteme = equals art or phronesis. All the phases are jaw-dropping and all apply this creative mastery to the glory of God. But they're also materially splendid, and easily appropriated for secular glory. Do the Saint-Chapelle and Chapel of Henry VII glorify God or king? To be more precise, the blur the lines between them. The glory of God is the glory of king. This is the same conflation of secular and sacred in the art of the late Middle Ages that inspired this detour into the Gothic in the first place. The sort of conflation that designs a royal tomb to look like a splendid Decorated Curvilinear chapel.
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| Tomb of Edward II, 1330s, Gloucester Cathedral |
The close look was important, not just to tease out these impulses, but to reconnect with one of the central pillars of the art of the West and how it can manifest materially. Because there is another cultural expression here too. The French and English Gothics are different. They express different national attitudes in readily distinguishable ways. But they are both clearly Gothic. As are all the other regional variations around the West. And this is the essential nature of the West - distinctly different nations that share certain larger value sets. On our ontological hierarchy, its the same God, common abstractions, and material-level differences. A more nuanced, historically real, and incoherent notion of identity that the monstrous pink slime of globalist tyranny.
We did say in the last post that the Gothic has a lot to teach us.
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