Gothic architecture is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. The style is characterised by pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses and large, traceried stained glass windows. It originated in the Île-de-France and Picardy regions of northern France. The Abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris, is considered to be the first Gothic building. Its choir was reconstructed between 1140 and 1144, drawing together the developing Gothic architectural features. The style at the time was sometimes known as opus Francigenum (); the term Gothic was first applied contemptuously during the later Renaissance, by those ambitious to revive the architecture of classical antiquity.
With the development of Renaissance architecture in Italy during the mid-15th century, the Gothic style was supplanted by the new style, but in some regions, notably England and what is now Belgium, Gothic continued to flourish and develop into the 16th century. A series of Gothic revivals began in mid-18th century England, spread through 19th century Europe and continued, largely for churches and university buildings, into the 20th century.
The Gothic style is particularly associated with church architecture, but it is also the architecture of many castles, palaces, town halls, guildhalls, universities and houses. Many of the finest examples of Gothic architecture are listed by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites.
Name
Medieval contemporaries characterised the style in Latin as ("French work" or "Frankish work"), as ("modern work"), or as ("new work"). Italian-speakers could call it ("German style").Bannister Fletcher, p. 524.
The term "Gothic architecture" originated as a pejorative description. Giorgio Vasari used the term "barbarous German style" in his Lives of the Artists (1550) to describe what is now considered the Gothic style,Vasari, Giorgio. The Lives of the Artists. Translated with an introduction and notes by J. C. and Peter Bondanella. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 1991, pp. 117 & 527, . and in the introduction to the Lives he attributes various architectural features to the Goths, whom he held responsible for destroying the ancient buildings after they conquered Rome, and for erecting new ones in this style.Vasari, Giorgio; Gerard Baldwin Brown, ed. (1907). Vasari on technique: being the introduction to the three arts of design, architecture, sculpture and painting, prefixed to the Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects. Translated by Louisa S. Maclehose. London: Dent, pp. b & 83. When Vasari wrote, Italy had experienced a century of building in the Vitruvian architectural vocabulary of classical orders revived in the Renaissance and seen as evidence of a new Golden Age of learning and refinement. Thus the Gothic style, being in opposition to classical architecture, from that point of view was associated with the destruction of progress and of sophistication.Lepine, Ayla & Laura Cleaver. Gothic Legacies: Four Centuries of Tradition and Innovation in Art and Architecture. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, p. 162. The assumption that classical architecture was better than Gothic architecture was widespread and proved difficult to counter.Gombrich, Ernst H. "The Renaissance Conception of Artistic Progress and Its Consequences", in Gombrich on the Renaissance, Volume 1: Norm and Form. London: Phaidon, 1985, p. 1. Vasari was echoed in the 16th century by François Rabelais, who referred to "Gotz" and "Ostrogotz"."Gotz" is rendered as "Huns" in Thomas Urquhart's English translation.
The polymath architect Christopher Wren (1632–1723) disapproved of the label "Gothic" for pointed architecture. He compared it to Islamic architecture, which he called the "Saracen style", pointing out that the pointed arch was not owed to the Goths but to Islam. Wren was one of the few to spread the belief that it was not the Europeans, but the "Saracens" who had originated the Gothic style, mentioning Europe's architectural debt to the Saracens no fewer than twelve times in his writings.Darke, Diana. Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe. London: C. Hurst & Co, 2020. p. 7. He believed that Europeans had first seen "Saracenic" pointed arches in the First Crusade, but this theory is now generally rejected, as pointed arches already existed in Europe by that date (for instance at Cluny Abbey, from 1089).Raquejo, Tonia. "The 'Arab Cathedrals': Moorish Architecture as Seen by British Travellers". The Burlington Magazine, 128, no. 1001 (August 1986), p. 556. Wren also decidedly broke with tradition in his assumption that Gothic architecture did not merely represent a violent and bothersome mistake (as Vasari had suggested). Rather, Wren saw that the Gothic style had developed over time along the lines of a changing society, and that it was thus a legitimate architectural style in its own right.Lepine, Ayla & Laura Cleaver. Gothic Legacies: Four Centuries of Tradition and Innovation in Art and Architecture. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, p. 164.
Influences
The Gothic style of architecture was strongly influenced by the Romanesque architecture from which it evolved, the growing population and wealth of European cities, and the desire to express local grandeur. It was also influenced by theological doctrines, which called for more light, and by technical improvements in vaults and buttresses that allowed much greater height and larger windows. Practical influences included the necessity of many churches, such as Chartres Cathedral and Canterbury Cathedral, to accommodate growing numbers of pilgrims. Influences from Islamic architecture on individual features of Gothic architecture, particularly the pointed arch, have been proposed, with Sicily, Iberia and contact with the eastern Mediterranean suggested as possible routes of transmission. The extent and significance of such influence remain debated. Pointed arches were already employed in Romanesque Europe, including at Cluny Abbey by the late eleventh or early twelfth century, while pointed arches and flying buttresses are also documented in earlier Byzantine architecture. Gothic architecture as a distinct architectural system developed in northern France in the twelfth century from preceding Romanesque building traditions.
Romanesque influence
Romanesque architecture had a major influence upon Gothic architecture, encompassing much the same geographic area. The plan of the Gothic cathedral was based upon the plan of the ancient Roman basilica, which was adopted by Romanesque architecture. The Latin cross plan, with a nave and transept, choir, ambulatory, and radiating chapels, came from the Romanesque model. The common three-storey elevation of arcade, triforium and clerestory was also a continuation from Romanesque architecture. When churches were vaulted, Romanesque masons used round barrel vaults, and groin vaults when two barrel vaults met at right angles. Rib vaults began to be used in the late 11th century, in England and Normandy. One of the first high rib vaults was in the Norman Durham Cathedral (begun 1093).Weber, Patrick, Histoire de l'Architecture (2018), pp. 35–37 The earlier vaults in the transepts have rounded arches, while the nave vaults use pointed arches. However, the quadrant arches in the aisles at Durham, often held to be early flying buttresses, in fact have no role in abutting the high vault, instead carrying the aisle roofs. Lessay Abbey in Normandy also has early rib vaults, of a similar date to Durham's. Cefalù Cathedral (1131–1267) in Sicily, built by the Normans, combines pointed arches and large rib vaults with mosaic decoration. Several Romanesque churches had walls pierced by galleries and wide windows, in the manner later praised by Abbot Suger at Saint-Denis, such as Anselm's choir at Canterbury Cathedral and Reading Abbey.
Byzantine and Islamic influence
The pointed arch was not an Islamic invention: pointed or near-pointed arches and forms of external buttressing akin to flying buttresses were occasionally used in Late Roman and Byzantine architecture. A sixth-century Byzantine example is the apse arch of the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna, though the point on this arch is very slight and may not have been deliberate. Pointed arches, pointed groin vaults and flying-buttress-like structures were used in Byzantine baths, aqueducts and cisterns on Cyprus, for instance at the Chytroi-Constantia Aqueduct (dated to 631 AD) serving the city of Constantia. However, these were isolated uses of the pointed arch in a round-arched architectural tradition, and were generally restricted to utilitarian functions rather than being a major aesthetic feature. Pointed and parabolic arches were also used in Sasanian architecture.
Islamic architecture subsequently made extensive use of the pointed arch, particularly from the Umayyad and Abbasid periods onward. The innovation of Islamic architecture was to use the pointed arch as an aesthetic device; it has been suggested that this was in rejection of the semicircular arches of existing Christian architecture, for instance when accompanied by anti-Christian calligraphy at the Dome of the Rock. Some scholars have proposed that contact with Islamic architecture in Iberia, Sicily and the eastern Mediterranean contributed to the adoption or dissemination of the pointed arch in medieval Western Europe. The extent of such influence is debated. The pointed arch was already established in Romanesque architecture by the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries; Kenneth Conant and Jean Bony identified its use at Cluny Abbey (begun 1089), and attributed its spread in part to its structural advantages. Cluny was the most important monastery in Europe, with the largest church at that time, and a network of subordinate monasteries in the Cluniac Order, so it was natural that any innovations there would have a wide impact. Aside from the pointed arches, there are other features more explicitly derived from Islamic architecture at Cluny, such as horseshoe arches in the triforium. Possible Islamic influence at Cluny raises chronological challenges: the abbey church predates both the First Crusade and many of the Norman-Arab-Byzantine churches with pointed arches in Sicily, and Moorish architecture in Spain generally used horseshoe arches rather than pointed ones.Draper 2005, p. 16 Conant suggested Amalfi and Monte Cassino as possible points of contact, though this interpretation is not universally accepted.
Intersecting-rib domes were also constructed in medieval Islamic architecture, including at the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba. Their ribs, however, differed in construction and structural function from the structural rib vaults characteristic of Gothic architecture. Particular forms of intersecting-rib domes were subsequently adopted in parts of Romanesque and Gothic Europe through contacts with Islamic Spain and Sicily. This direct contact also produced buildings combining Romanesque or Gothic construction with Islamic decorative forms.Harvey, L. P. (1992). "Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500." Chicago : University of Chicago Press. ; Boswell, John (1978). Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities Under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century. Yale University Press. .