The term Gothic was first used during the Italian Renaissance to characterize all the monuments of the Middle Ages because they were contemptuously regarded as the products of barbarian Goths and therefore utterly lacking in artistic merit. Subsequently, however, the term was restricted to the art and architecture of those centuries immediately following the Romanesque period and preceding the Renaissance. As the last medieval period, the Gothic age has now also come to be regarded as one of Europe's outstanding artistic eras. EARLY AND HIGH GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE Gothic architecture, arising out of the 12th-century heyday of the Romanesque (see \TRomanesque art and architecture\t), remained the dominant expression of the Gothic period and outlasted all of the other Gothic arts well into the 16th century. Whereas a vast number of noteworthy secular buildings were produced in the Gothic style, it was in the service of the church, the most prolific builder of the Middle Ages, that the new architectural ideas were formulated and brought to their fullest fruition. Although by 1400 Gothic architecture had become international in scope, its creative heartland was in northern France in an area stretching from the royal domain around Paris, including Saint-Denis and Chartres, to the region of the Champagne in the east and southward to Bourges. Within this restricted area, in the series of cathedrals erected in the course of the 12th and 13th centuries, the major innovations of Gothic architecture took place. Gothic architecture is not easily defined. Although rib vaulting and the pointed arch (see \Tarch and vault\t) are its most characteristic features, both were widely used in Romanesque churches. Only when diagonal ribs are used in direct conjunction with pointed transverse arches in the vaulting of an interior can a structure be identified as Gothic. This type of rib vaulting was the decisive factor in the evolution of the French cathedrals. Because they were concentrated in those few small areas from which the ribs spring, the outward thrusts of the vaults--deflected downward by the pointed transverse arches--could be more easily counteracted by narrow buttresses and by external arches, or flying buttresses, invented at \TNotre Dame de Paris\t sometime after 1163. With these structural advantages, the thick Romanesque walls could be replaced with translucent walls of \Tstained glass\t, and the builders were also able to erect vaulted interiors of unprecedented heights. Early Gothic Architecture In France, Gothic architecture appeared sporadically in a number of different locales in the early decades of the 12th century. But the creative phase of Gothic architecture that was to lead to the building of the great northern cathedrals began in 1144 with the completion, under the patronage of Abbot \TSuger\t, of the ambulatory (aisle circling the apse) and radiating \Lchapel\ls of the royal \Tabbey\t of \TSaint-Denis\t just outside Paris. Instead of being separated in Romanesque fashion, the chapels now opened out into each other, forming a single flowing space called a chevet, while the slender supports of the vaults and the expansive windows further de-emphasize the solids. The innovations at Saint-Denis led in the 1160s to a series of bold experiments. Still adhering to the general features of the French Romanesque churches--a three-aisled \Tnave\t, a \Ttransept\t, and a semicircular chevet, with a three-story elevation consisting of a groundfloor \Tarcade\t, a gallery over the side aisles and a \Tclerestory\t--the architects of the Early Gothic cathedrals sought, often in complicated ways, to open up the solid walls and to attain added height by inserting still another story between the galleries and the clerestory. Known as a \Ttriforium\t, this additional story is nothing more than a narrow passageway contrived in the thickness of the wall immediately below the clerestory windows and faced on the open inner side with a small arcade. Although minor in size, the triforium was to become a standard feature in later Gothic churches. Notre Dame de Paris, in its original unremodeled form (with circular openings instead of a triforium), and the five-towered Cathedral of Laon, both begun in the 1160s, are two of the most successful of these experiments in four-story elevation; the interior of Notre Dame de Paris attained a height of 35 m (115 ft), unprecedented for its time. These results, however, involved complexities that demanded a solution, and it was in the rebuilding of \TChartres Cathedral\t, begun immediately following a catastrophic fire in 1194, that they were resolved. By dispensing with the gallery over the side aisles of the nave, but retaining the narrow band of the triforium, Chartres returned to a simpler three-story design. Height was achieved by the creation of a huge clerestory as tall as the groundfloor arcade and, in each bay, embracing two large lancet windows surmounted by a \Trose window\t. In one stroke the architect of Chartres had created a clarified and integrated formula for the elevation of a Gothic interior that, in spite of all subsequent changes in style, was to be endlessly repeated in the later churches. High Gothic Architecture Chartres inaugurated the High Gothic period; it culminated in the great Coronation Cathedral of \TReims\t, begun in 1210. Somewhat cold and intellectual in design, overwhelming in scale, and, like Chartres, ponderous in its masonry structure, the internal proportions of Reims are as classical in their way as those of the Parthenon. A notable contribution of Reims to the development of later Gothic architecture was bar tracery, or stone framework of a Gothic window, invented by its first architect for the windows of the apsidal chapels. The earlier plate tracery, such as that in the clerestory of Chartres, consists essentially of a series of openings in a masonry wall constructed in horizontal courses. In bar tracery these separate openings are absorbed into a single large window, which is then subdivided into tall lancets by thin upright monoliths, the so-called mullions. The openwork tracery in the head of the window is fashioned somewhat in the manner of a cutout. The Cathedral of Bourges, begun in 1195, rivals Chartres and Reims in providing a High Gothic solution to the problems of church design. Here height is achieved from below by means of an extraordinarily lofty ground-floor arcade, thus reducing the dimensions of the clerestory to approximately those of the triforium. The soaring 42-m (138-ft) nave of \TAmiens Cathedral\t (begun 1220), chronologically following Reims, represents a transitional stage in which attenuation and aspiring verticality are again stressed, while the tracery of the large clerestory windows is a further elaboration of the simpler design of Reims. In 1225 a Reims architect undertook the rebuilding of Beauvais Cathedral. Basing his groundfloor design on the gigantic, lofty arcades of Bourges, a height of 48 m (157 ft) was reached by superimposing on the arcades an almost equally tall clerestory, thus creating one of the loftiest continuous interiors ever attempted. Of the early 13th-century west facades destined for the cathedrals, only those of Laon and Notre Dame de Paris were brought to completion as originally planned, each a contrast to the other--the upward-thrusting facade of Laon is sculpturesque and dynamic where Notre Dame de Paris is planar and recessive. The cavernous triple portals of Laon were amplified in those of Amiens, which, in part, provided the models for the five gabled portals of Bourges. Rayonnant Architecture The last of the great cathedrals, Beauvais, was begun the year before Louis IX came to the throne in 1226. Early in his long reign there emerged a new phase of Gothic architecture known as Rayonnant (see \TRayonnant style\t), a term derived from the radiating spokes of the immense rose windows that form an important, but by no means essential, feature of this new style. Height was no longer the dominant goal. Rather, the aim of Rayonnant architecture was the further elimination of solid masonry by piercing the triforium wall with traceried windows. A more unified internal effect was also achieved by continuing the vaulting shafts uninterruptedly from pavement to vault and by linking the clerestory windows and the triforium arcade into one interrelated design. The rebuilding of Saint-Denis was the first major undertaking in the Rayonnant. Beginning in 1232 the whole of the church, with the exception of the ambulatory and west facade, was reconstructed in the new style to supply additional space for the series of royal tombs. The structure that best epitomizes the spirit of the Rayonnant, however, is the \TSainte-Chapelle\t, the shrinelike chapel erected (1246-48) on the Parisian Ile-de-la-Cite. It was commissioned by Louis IX as a fitting receptacle for the Crown of Thorns he had acquired from the Latin emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople. Piers, arches, and tracery formed a delicate armature for the jeweled medallions of the stained-glass windows that completely fill the spaces between the slender vaulting shafts. Stained-Glass Windows The windows of Gothic churches were progressively enlarged--not to allow more light to penetrate into the interior, but to increase the areas reserved for the stained glass. With their full complement of stained-glass windows, the interiors of Gothic structures were actually darker than those of many a Romanesque church. It was a luminous darkness, however, alive with the refracted glow of the glass, an effect that can still be appreciated at Chartres, Bourges, and the Sainte-Chapelle. The subject matter of stained-glass windows can be divided into two categories. The lancets of the clerestory are generally occupied by large figures of saints and prophets, sometimes of immense size, and thus easily distinguishable from below. The more detailed episodes from the Bible and the legends of the saints, rendered with an effective economy in design, are illustrated in small medallions in the windows of the aisles and of the ambulatory chapels that are nearer to the observer. Throughout the first half of the 13th century the color scheme was dominated by a brilliant ruby red and a dark saturated blue. With the lighter tonality of the later glass and with the introduction of grisaille glass--white glass infused with gray patterns--the earlier mystic darkness was dispelled. Influence of French Gothic Architecture The impact of French Gothic architecture on much of continental Europe was profound. The scheme of Bourges, with its gigantic arcade and short clerestory, was repeated only once in France, at Le Mans, but it served as the direct model for the Spanish cathedrals of Toledo (begun 1227) and Burgos (begun 1221). By 1509, when the new cathedral of Salamanca was begun, it had long been part of indigenous Spanish architecture. The giant arcade and the French semicircular chevet were used in the cathedrals of Palma de Mallorca (begun 1306), Barcelona (begun 1298), and Gerona (begun 1312). The nave of Amiens served as the inspiration for the Cathedral of Leon (begun c.1255). In Germany the towers of Laon were copied at Bamberg (c.1237) and Naumburg (c.1237) and its four-story elevation emulated in the Cathedral of Limburg-an-der-Lahn (begun 1211). French High Gothic forms appear throughout Saint Elizabeth's Church (begun 1235) at Marburg, and at Cologne the cathedral (begun 1248), rivaling Beauvais in height, transports to the banks of the Rhine the Rayonnant choir of Amiens. England and Italy were the exceptions to this pervasive influence across the continent. The Gothic churches of Florence, in a uniquely Italianate style, and the style reminiscent of a French cathedral facade at Siena (begun 1284) and Orvieto (begun 1226) were but stages of the progression toward the Renaissance of Filippo \TBrunelleschi\t. In England, French Gothic intrudes decisively only twice: once in the 1170s at \TCanterbury Cathedral\t and again in Henry III's rebuilding of \TWestminster Abbey\t (begun 1245), designed along the lines of Reims but modified by Parisian Rayonnant. With these exceptions, England continued to be highly original and independent. Eschewing the emphasis on height and the logical constructionalism of French Gothic, the English churches stressed horizontality in the elevation and an extreme elongation in plan. Double transepts were sometimes included, and a square east end was usually substituted for the French polygonal chevet. Typically English as well was the multiplication in the number of vaulting ribs, some purely decorative. EARLY AND HIGH GOTHIC SCULPTURE Like its Romanesque antecedents, Gothic sculpture was at first predominantly an architectural adornment on church portals. Like the new forms of the Early Gothic cathedrals, it can also be said to have originated at Saint-Denis in the triple portals of the west facade, consecrated in 1140. But at Saint-Denis this Proto-Gothic sculpture was still overwhelmingly Romanesque in character. It was only at Chartres, in the somewhat later west portals of about 1155 that survive from the older cathedral, that Gothic overtones began to manifest themselves, particularly in the work of the outstanding sculptor, the so-called headmaster, who was responsible for the central portal. Here in the \Ttympanum\t the Romanesque theme of the Apocalyptic Christ surrounded by symbols of the four Evangelists had been reinterpreted in boldly conceived plastic forms, while a new human quality, unknown in Romanesque sculpture, pervaded the benign figure of the blessing Savior. The major innovation of this Proto-Gothic style, however, was the so-called statue-columns in the lateral embrasures of the portal: the tall over-life-size figures reiterate in their columnar form the colonnettes to which they are attached. Eventually the statue-column led to the freestanding monumental statue, a form of sculpture hitherto unknown in the Middle Ages. In France during the next few decades, the west portals of Chartres inspired a host of similar portals with statue-columns and also gave rise to one of the outstanding creations of medieval Spain--the sculptural ensemble of the cathedral at Santiago da Compostela, appropriately known as the Portico de la Gloria (1168-88). Nevertheless, all these monuments retained to some degree the imprint of their Romanesque heritage. In the 1180s, however, in northern Europe as well as in England, a more relaxed period in all the arts began, in which the more rigidly controlled Romanesque figure style was replaced by a feeling of grace, sinuosity, and freedom of movement. This so-called classicizing style culminates around 1210 in such notable works as the great series of sculptures on the north and south transept portals of the new Cathedral of Chartres. The classical quality of this phase of Gothic sculpture is clearly seen in the group of the Visitation, of about 1230, on the west-central portal of Reims cathedral, created at a time when the statue-column had at last completely emancipated itself from its rigid columnar form. Veiled like a Roman matron, the Virgin of the Visitation turns toward her older cousin Elizabeth in a contrappostal (twisted) pose reminiscent of a classical Greek statue. Unclassical, however, is the curving sway of her body that was to become the typical stance of so many later Gothic statues. At the left, the neighboring group of the Annunciation demonstrates the reaction against this classicizing phase. Although by an inferior sculptor, the more restrained Virgin of the Annunciation, in a severe style derived from Amiens, possesses the clear volumetric definition lacking in the Visitation group. In the announcing angel (c.1250), Gothic sculpture had finally come into its own. Instead of the confused impressionistic surface treatment of the drapery in the Visitation, that of the angel is given a structural solidity by the large angular V-folds of his mantle and the long tubular forms of his undergarment that break sharply around his feet. His smiling features, clustered curls, and mannered pose all belong to a later stage of the Reims sculpture that synthesizes naturalistic forms with courtly affectations and a delicate spirituality. It was in Germany, however, that Gothic statuary, influenced by that of Reims, achieved its fullest plastic expression. At Bamberg, the sculptor of a group of the Visitation in the interior of the cathedral, inspired by the figures at Reims, was also responsible (c.1240) for the Bamberg Rider, the first truly monumental equestrian statue of the later Middle Ages. Although the identity of the regal horseman remains unknown, no other work so impressively embodies the chivalrous ideal of the medieval ruler. The stylistic evolution of Gothic sculpture, briefly traced thus far, was accompanied by the introduction of new themes in the subject matter of the sculptured portals, reflecting the growing intensification of the cult of the Virgin Mary. In the 1170s, for the first time on a cathedral portal, her death, her assumption, and her crowning by Christ in Heaven are represented on the tympanum of the main doorway of the Cathedral of Senlis near Paris. From then on a coronation portal was included among the doorways of the major Gothic cathedrals. On the west facades of Laon and Reims the crowning of Mary had even supplanted the traditional subject of the Last Judgment as the major theme of the central portal. Along with this development a new type of cult statue of the Virgin, standing and holding the Christ Child, was introduced between 1215 and 1220 on the central pier of the coronation portal on the west facade of Notre Dame de Paris. By the middle of the 13th century this new type, now in the manneristic idiom of the angel of Reims, assumes a more intimate and maternal character as the swaying figure of the Virgin playfully balances the Christ Child on the outward thrust of her hip--an image that in the ensuing centuries was to be disseminated in an infinite variety of versions throughout Western Europe. DECORATIVE ARTS In Paris during the reign of Louis IX the decorative arts tended to emulate the arts of the churches. In the series of Moralized Bibles of the second quarter of the 13th century, as in the Bible Moralisee (c.1230-40; Bibliotheque Nationale, MS 11560) in Paris, the columns of medallions that frame the illustrations in these vast picture books frankly imitate stained-glass windows. In the 1260s the large metal shrines, or reliquaries (see \Treliquary\t), of the saints assumed the aspect of diminutive Rayonnant churches, and the decorative gables surmounting the traceried roses of the windows on the exterior of the Sainte-Chapelle were copied in the miniatures of the Psalter of Louis IX (1253-70; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris). The forms and mannerisms of the monumental sculpture are in turn reflected in the willowy figures of the Psalter illustrations. From this same period the delicate ivory of the Virgin with the Christ Child (c.1260; Louvre, Paris) from the Sainte-Chapelle was directly inspired by the large statue formerly on one of the portals of the chapel and preserved in a modern Parisian church. The decorative arts assumed a more independent role in the first half of the 14th century. The expressionistic tendencies in Germany resulted in the creation of devotional works of extraordinary pathos. About 1300 the misnamed Plague Crosses of polychromed wood appeared, in which the emaciated, broken body of the Savior hangs from a forked cross, as in the Forked Cross (c.1304; Santa Maria im Kapitol) in Cologne. Later a new type of the mourning Virgin, seated and holding the dead body of Christ across her lap--the so-called Pieta--is given its most harrowing evocation in the statuette in Bonn (polychromed wood, 14th century; Rheinisches Landesmuseum). In Parisian \Tilluminated manuscripts\t, as illustrated in a page from the Belleville Breviary (1323-26; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; MS Lat. 10488), decorated by Jean PUCELLE in the 1320s, the lettering, the vignette at the beginning of the text, the vine borders with their butterflies and other creatures, and the little scenes at the bottom of the page all contribute to a totally integrated effect that established an enduring precedent for later illuminators. More significant for the future, however, was the rendering of the little barrel-vaulted room in the vignette. Here Pucelle used the new art of linear \Tperspective\t borrowed from the contemporaneous illusionistic painting (see \Tillusionism\t) of the Italian Proto-Renaissance. LATE GOTHIC PERIOD Although Paris had been the leading artistic center of northern Europe since the 1230s, the ravages of the Black Death and the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War in the middle of the 14th century drastically changed the situation. Paris became only one among several other independent artistic centers, while the most talented artists were those imported from French and Belgian Flanders. The International Style As a result of this dissemination of artistic currents a new pictorial style emerged in which, as foreshadowed by Pucelle, Gothic elements were combined with the developing illusionistic art of the Italian painters. This \TInternational Style\t in art has sometimes been described as Gothic. In this context, however, the term can only be understood as a qualitative adjective, because by definition illusionistic painting lies outside the medieval artistic conceptions of the Gothic period. Gothic sculpture, however, remained unaffected by the Italian Renaissance. Its naturalistic tendencies led to new developments. In Paris around 1387 the lifelike figures of Charles V and his queen (Louvre, Paris) from the Hospice Chapel of the Quinze-Vingts herald the revival of the standing-portrait statue, a form of sculpture unknown in the West after late Roman times. Late Gothic Sculpture The most momentous works were those produced for Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, by the Flemish sculptor Claus \TSluter\t, whose art culminates in the series of prophets surrounding the so-called Well of Moses, created between 1395 and 1404 at the Chartreuse de Champmol in Dijon. Breaking away entirely from the soft, pliant aristocratic types current in the 14th century, Sluter conceived his prophets in terms of rugged Flemish patriarchs. In the Moses he emphasized enormous breadth in the voluminous folds of the cape, and in the bald-headed Isaiah he created a highly individualized figure worthy of Donatello. Although after his death, in 1406, the influence of Sluter expanded over much of Europe, by 1500 the era of Gothic sculpture was drawing to its close. Late Gothic Churches The last phase of French Gothic architecture was the Flamboyant (see \TFlamboyant\t \Tstyle\t), so named for the flamelike quality of its intricate curvilinear decoration. Among its new decorative motifs was the acutely pointed ogee arch, formed of two double curves. The major ornamentation of this ebullient style was reserved for the exterior. The interior of the churches underwent a drastic simplification by eliminating the capitals of all the \TPiers\t, which were reduced to plain masonry supports, from which the moldings of the vaulting ribs gradually emerge. But the ribs themselves formed an intricate network of ever more complicated patterns. These features are also observable in the German churches, as in the interior of the Lorenzkirche (1439-77) in Nuremberg. Although it was already underway by the 1380s, the great flowering of Flamboyant architecture did not occur in France until the first half of the 16th century, when several of the older cathedrals, such as Beauvais, received magnificent transept facades in the new style, while smaller Flamboyant churches proliferated everywhere. In Germany the most ubiquitous manifestation of Late Gothic architecture is in the form of the hall church wherein three aisles are all of the same height, as in the choir of the Nuremberg Lorenzkirche. Never prone to imitation, the English builders devised their own Late Gothic style--the \TPerpendicular Gothic style\t--using a traceried rectangular panel as a module for both window tracery and wall decoration and even, in modified shapes, for the new type of fan vaulting that reached its apogee in the Chapel (1502-12) of Henry VII at Westminster Abbey, where it is combined with gravity-defying pendentives. Late Gothic Secular Buildings Late Gothic architecture, however, is not confined to churches. The roster of important secular buildings is almost endless. In Belgium the series of civic halls began very early with the huge belfried Cloth Hall (1304-80; destroyed 1915) of Ypres and continued to the apogee of Late Gothic, the Hotel de Ville (1448-63) of Louvain. In France the civic buildings culminated in the vast Flamboyant Gothic Palais de Justice (1499; damaged 1944) at Rouen. In the earlier periods the austere castles had been little affected by developments in ecclesiastical architecture, but in the 1380s the grim fortresses began to be transformed into pleasure palaces. From this period stems France's earliest important monument in the Flamboyant style, the large traceried screen surmounting the triple fireplace (1384-86) added to the ancient castle hall of the Palais des Comtes at Poitiers. The 15th-century castellated House of Jacques Coeur (1443-51) at Bourges is the grandest of the many Late Gothic town mansions including the elegant Hotel de Cluny (1485) in Paris, now appropriately transformed into a museum for the arts of the Middle Ages. All over France, from Josselin (early 16th century) in Brittany to Amboise (1483-1501) and \TBlois\t (1498-1515) on the Loire, new chateaux were being erected in the Flamboyant style. Late Gothic secular architecture also developed its own architectural vernacular, from the Venetian Gothic of the Ca d'Oro (Golden House; c.1430) and the \TDoge's Palace\t (1424-1529) to the Tudor Gothic of \THampton Court\t (1515-36) on the Thames and the Collegiate Gothic of Oxford and Cambridge (15th and 16th centuries). In the 17th and 18th centuries, however, few attempts were made to build in a Gothic style. The great resurgence came with the \TGothic Revival\t of the 19th century, responsible for London's famous Houses of Parliament, or \TWestminster Palace\t (begun 1840). In such original creations as Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral (completed 1979) and the nave of \TSaint John the Divine\t in New York (still in progress), the Gothic Revival has lasted to the present day. William M. Hinkle Bibliography: Aubert, M., The Art of the High Gothic Era, trans. by P. Gorge (1965); Avril, F., Manuscript Painting at the Court of France, the Fourteenth Century, 1310-1380 (1978); Branner, R., Gothic Architecture (1961); Christensen, R.P., Gothic and Renaissance Architecture in Great Britain (1982); Deuchler, F., Gothic Art, trans. by V. Menkes (1973); Erlande-Brandenburg, Alain, Paris Gothic Art, trans. by J. Mark (1989); Evans, Joan, Art in Medieval France, 987-1498 (1969); Frankl, Paul, Gothic Architecture, trans. by D. Pevsner (1963); Grodecki, Louis, Gothic Architecture, trans. by I. Mark (1977; repr. 1985); Harvey, John, Cathedrals of England and Wales (1974); Kidson, P., Sculpture at Chartres (1958; repr. 1975); Male, Emile, The Gothic Image, trans. by Dora Nussey (1958); Martindale, A., Gothic Art from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century (1967) and Gothic Art (1985); Porcher, Jean, Medieval French Miniatures, trans. by J. Brown (1960); Sauerlander, W., Gothic Sculpture in France, 1140-1270, trans. by J. Sonderheimer (1972); Stoddard, W. S., Monastery and Cathedral in France (1966); Swaan, Wim, The Gothic Cathedral (1969); Wilson, Christopher, Gothic Cathedral (1989). See also: \Tarchitecture\t; \Tart\t; \Tcathedrals and churches\t; \TEnglish art and architecture\t; \TFlemish art and architecture\t; \TFrench art and architecture\t; \TGerman art and architecture\t; \TItalian art and architecture\t; \Tmonastic art and architecture\t; \Tpainting\t; \TScandinavian art and architecture\t; \Tsculpture\t; \TSpanish art and architecture\t.