Reading Gothic Architecture and The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture (2024)

More than a quarter of a century has elapsed since the last attempts to write the Gothic Summa. I think particularly of Jean Bony’s French Gothic Architecture of the 12th and 13th Centuries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), much criticized at the time for its “modernistic” viewpoint and for detaching buildings from their historical context in the construction of the big, style-based story of Gothic; also relevant is Die gotische Architektur in Frankreich 1130–1270 by Dieter Kimpel and Robert Suckale (Descrizione libro: Hirmer Verlag, 1985), which veered in the opposite direction, locating architecture within ideologies of power and an understanding of the industrial technologies of mass production. Art historians in recent decades, troubled by doubts about the traditional underpinnings of the discipline (the study of “style”; “iconography”; the limits of “positivism”; etc.) along with the validity of the intellectual assumptions of the great figures of the recent past (including Erwin Panofsky, Hans Sedlmayr, Otto von Simson, Paul Frankl, and Bony), have tended to pursue local issues and monographs exploring devotional and liturgical practices, institutional and urban context, and materiality and technology. What kind of scenario can possibly be invented to weave into a coherent and unified narrative the thousands of buildings called “Gothic”?

And so it is with great pleasure that one registers the extraordinary phenomenon of two international conferences on Gothic architecture, both held in England in the same year, 2005. The participants in the two conferences appear to have been charged to address the two poles of any comprehension of the Gothic: first, what does it mean to those who respond to the completed building (i.e., “reading” Gothic); and second, how to correlate an understanding of the way it looks with an exploration of issues of time (circa 1300), place (Europe), and creativity (the “new” architecture)?

It might be useful to begin with the first agenda, featured in Reading Gothic Architecture, since it initially appears to be less problematic and more self-contained than the attempt to pursue contextualized style history over a vast spread of time and space. Eric Fernie opens with the ambitious title, “Medieval Modernism and the Origins of Gothic.” Having first identified Marvin Trachtenberg’s exploration of Gothic as “medieval modernism” as “most productive and thought-provoking” (11), he then takes issue with Trachtenberg’s rejection of the usefulness of notions of “style”: “If styles are treated as fluid parts of normal human discourse and behaviour, there is no justification for denying them” (14). Since “discourse” must involve more than one party, it is difficult, then, to understand why Fernie concludes that the choice of the key elements of Gothic—rib vaults and pointed arches—were exclusively the business of the master mason: in the case of St-Denis, the patron (Abbot Suger) is considered essentially backward-looking. Yet these key elements of Gothic were old, derived from the Mediterranean world via Islam. Fernie goes on in the second part of his essay to reflect upon a particular aspect of Gothic creativity—the deployment in edifices like Noyon and Laon Cathedrals of masonry projecting over void (porte-à-faux) to enhance the appearance of lightness. Fernie’s final reductio ad absurbum of the historicist/modernist debate makes one wonder about the very usefulness of such a polarity.

Kathryn Brush’s “Screening, Sculpture, and the Structuring of Viewer Experience in Thirteenth-Century Mainz” brings attention to the importance of the diocese of Metz, and seeks to reestablish the significance of the lost choir screen (1230s), the fragments of which have, in older scholarship, been considered mostly in relation to the more famous (and surviving) screen at Naumburg. Her emphasis upon the physicality of the relationship between the screen sculptures and their audiences in relation to local issues has much in common with Jackie Jung’s treatment of Naumburg (Jacqueline Jung, “Beyond the Barrier: The Unifying Role of the Choir Screen in Gothic Churches,” The Art Bulletin 82 [December 2000]: 622–57). Exploring issues of representation and illusionism, Linda Neagley’s “Late Gothic Architecture and Vision: Re-presentation, Scenography, and Illusionism” focuses on the Late Gothic parish of St-Maclou in Rouen. “Re-presentation” is understood as the significance of the two- and three-dimensional images of the church that accompanied its dedication in 1521. Neagley also explores the scenographic aspects of the spaces (exterior as well as interior) of the church, and she examines the visual seductiveness accompanying the complex forms of this exquisitely designed and executed monument—a seduction that induces the visitor to undertake a pilgrimage that is mnemonic as well as physical.

James Bugslag’s “Architectural Drafting and the ‘Gothicization’ of the Gothic Cathedral” documents the increasing similarity, starting in the mid-thirteenth century, of the motifs found in miniature representations of architecture (“microarchitecture”) with the forms of real buildings, reflecting upon the role of such representations in the formation of a shared “language” (koine) of style that, by the mid-thirteenth century, gives Gothic a common look uniting different media, including architecture, painting, sculpture, and metalwork.

In “The Integration of Architecture, Imagery and Ornament in English West Country Gothic Architecture, 1170–1250,” Malcolm Thurlby revisits the notion of a “West Country School of Masons” (Brakespear), while documenting shared motifs and design strategies in Worcester Cathedral, Glastonbury Abbey, Wells, and Winchester, as well as contemporary sculptured images, and emphasizing the role of a single master mason like Elias of Dereham (artifex incomparabilis) in the propagation of such elements. The role of the patron is, in Thurlby’s scheme of things, more likely to involve the insistence upon references to the venerable older building that was being replaced by the new.

Caroline Bruzelius’s “A Rose By Any Other Name: The ‘Not Gothic Enough’ Architecture of Italy (Again)” displays useful skepticism concerning the canonic polarities and buzzwords of current “discourse”—such as “historicizing and modern,” “eclectic,” and national “resistance”—and instead offers a constructive view of the importance of Italian cities and the role of businessmen in sponsoring architectural production in the new “splendid self-representation.”

Many of the essays in Reading Gothic Architecture revisit well-worn themes. Jill Caskey’s “Liquid Gothic: Uses of Stucco in Southern Italy” opens an entirely new domain. If Viollet-le-Duc had encouraged seeing the forms of articulation of Gothic as functional, subsequent generations have viewed that “function” as largely symbolic or representational. In southern Italy such forms might be applied and moulded in the form of stucco, providing wonderfully fluid linkages between periods and styles—Byzantine, Early Christian, and Gothic.

Rachel Moss’s “Revivalist Tendencies in Irish Late Gothic: Defining a National Identity?” and Christy Anderson’s “Reading Gothic in the English Renaissance” provide well-informed and stimulating essays on the power of the Gothic to express local identity (Irishness, Englishness) in the face of foreign intrusions.

Ethan Matt Kavaler’s “Architectural Wit: Playfulness and Deconstruction in the Gothic of the Sixteenth Century” offers an exciting exploration of what he calls “deliberate errors” in the Late Late Gothic architecture of Germany—for instance, ribs that appear to have slipped and been reattached with a fictive iron bolt. Such disjunctions jolt the easy “anagogical” passage of the eye up along the line of responds and ribs. Gothic, originally a non-representational mode, is increasingly filled with mimetic elements. Readers of Kavaler’s essay are privileged to witness masons who appear, tongue in cheek, to actually mock the conventions of their own discipline.

While Reading Gothic Architecture has only eleven contributors and an introductory essay of modest length, The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture includes seventeen essays with a substantial introduction by Paul Crossley, “prime mover” of the conference, to whom the publication is dedicated. Rather than rehearsing each of the contributions in detail, it might be worthwhile to begin with this essay—something of a manifesto—and touch upon individual pieces mostly in relation to general themes. Revisiting Werner Gross’s pioneering work, Die Abendländische Architektur um 1300 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1948), Crossley endorses the importance of extending an understanding of the Gothic beyond the confines of twelfth-to-thirteenth-century France that had dominated earlier representations of it. Gross, according to Crossley, having recognized that the year 1300 brought profound creative changes in the Gothic over a range of countries corresponding to western Europe, identified two opposite modes of structural articulation: on the one hand, buildings derived from the intensely linear forms of the “Rayonnant” architecture of mid-thirteenth-century France; on the other, the austerely stripped-down yet dramatically spacious monuments that have become known as “Reduktionsgotik.” Rather than attempting to cram the story of the Gothic into the syllogistic mechanism of the reconciliation of opposites in order to discover “generating principles,” Crossley promises variety. However, he then goes on to embrace a biological metaphor: the notion of the “hybrid,” with its combination of opposites: “Hybrids synthesize elements not usually connected into surprisingly new and meaningful constructions . . . [they] prosper in situations of mutually-enhancing difference” (10).

In certain respects Crossley’s agenda, mapped out in his introduction, echoes Matthew Reeves’s preoccupation with the notion of architecture as language: “Architecture, of course, had always been parlante, a semiotic medium both forceful and imprecise” (14). Of course, this metaphor of language, when applied to the expressive power and spaciousness of architecture, badly needs qualification: if buildings can, indeed, speak, what, then, explains the need for the twenty-eight interlocutors in the pages of these two volumes? Why not let the buildings speak for themselves?

What themes are addressed in the papers delivered at the Courtauld Institute conference and collected in The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture? First, readers are introduced to the formal qualities of Rayonnant and its transformation. Michael Davis provides an eloquent account of the interiors of Clermont Cathedral and St-Urbain, Troyes, as a framing mechanism for carefully integrated programs of stained glass, relating the phenomenon to contemporary theories of optics where sight is understood in geometric terms. Yves Gallet reflects upon the “conservative” architectural qualities of circa 1300 architecture, especially embodied in the abbey church of St-Ouen in Rouen, presenting the phenomenon in relation to analogous changes in music. Christian Freigang documents the new forms of articulation that appear in the second part of the thirteenth century: the de-emphasis and eventual disappearance of the capital, emphasizing the importance of Narbonne Cathedral (begun in 1272). Following the lead of Kimpel’s pioneering work of twenty-five years ago on mass production, Freigang associates the phenomenon with a rationalization of the process of building. However, I do not find the term “wall framework structure” particularly helpful. Marc Carel Schurr provides a most enlightening exploration of the Rayonnant elements of the new western frontispiece of Strasbourg Cathedral (begun 1277), documenting the interactions between Strasbourg and Cologne and the power of the second generation of Rayonnant generated by the masons of Strasbourg. Christopher Wilson offers an insightful new analysis of the peculiar design characteristics of the superstructure of the collegiate church of St-Urbain in Troyes, contrasting the lack of response to these features by subsequent builders in France with the enthusiastic reception in England. According to Wilson, St-Urbain was considered desirable, not for any ideological reason, but because of the seductiveness of the architecture per se. Norbert Nussbaum, proposing the notion of the “hybrid” espoused by Crossley, employs a syllogistic mechanism to explore, for example, the contrasting curved and rectilinear, attenuated and massive, forms of the musical gallery of Saint Martin, Landshut, where the enormous appears to be penetrated by the ethereal. Rayonnant prototypes, with their close links to Capetian France, provided a powerful vehicle of meaning (the Königskirche): this phenomenon is explored by Klára Benesovská in relation to the Cistercian church of Sedlec in Bohemia.

Second, contributors consider the relationship between architectural form and institutional, liturgical, and devotional demands. Tim Ayers, building upon the idea of a transformed Rayonnant, provides a most welcome look at Merton College Chapel and the way its stained glass program was intended to project the Apostolic roots of the college community in the face of challenges by the mendicants. Caroline Bruzelius, in her exploration of urban church architecture (particularly of the mendicant orders) in Italy, eschews traditional style analysis, concentrating instead upon the process of construction, funding, the role of preaching, and a lucrative control of burial in urban spaces that might provide the funds necessary for the construction of the huge churches. “Institutional demands” also includes the special needs of urban churches. Thus, co-editor Alexandra Gajewski explains the “conservative” forms of the church of St-Bénigne of Dijon, understood in older literature as resulting from a lack of creativity or funds, in relation to special urban requirements and the patronage of Abbot Hugh of Arc-sur-Thil. Co-editor Zoë Opačić explores the New Town at Prague; Tomasz Węcławowicz looks at Krakow; and Thomas Coomans provides an exciting look at little-known buildings associated with the urban architecture of the Low Countries. Marc Carel Schurr provides valuable insights into the roles of the cities of Cologne and Strasbourg as centers of architectural creativity and production.

Third is a consideration of regional identity. Christoph Brachmann, taking the little-known church of the Order of St. Anthony at Pont-à-Mousson, provides a welcome survey of the significance of medieval architecture in Lorraine and the powerful role of prototypes in the city of Metz. Benesovská explores three little-known churches from Bohemia, documenting the continuing power of French Cistercian prototypes (Longpont and Royaumont) with their cachet of Capetian patronage. Bohemia after 1300 is also the subject of an essay by Opačić, who has a particularly interesting commentary upon the church of the Emmaus monastery in Prague, and on the architecture of the capital city, proposing the authorship of Matthias of Arras for the Emmaus church. And, of course, the essays by Bruzelius, Coomans, and Wilson enhance an understanding of Italy, the Low Countries, and England. But where is Spain?

Fourth is the “idea” of Gothic expressed in drawings and microarchitecture. Robert Bork, employing computer-assisted drafting, provides an analysis (difficult to follow, at times) of the application of the octagon in the generation of the design of the frontispiece of Cologne Cathedral in the so-called Plan F (circa 1300). Achim Timmermann adds the little-known font ciborium of Saint Mary’s in Luton to his list of manifestations of “microarchitecture,” documenting both functional and symbolic dimensions.

Fifth, essays on the techniques and materials of construction and the technology of investigation are somewhat lacking, though Freigang does touch upon mass production in relation to his notion of the “wall-framework structure,” and Coomans provides important information on brick construction. Oddly enough, there is little reference to the new techniques of investigation (dendrochronolgy, stone analysis, laser scanning, digital databases, etc.), the exception being Coomans who makes extensive use of dating by dendrochronology.

I would conclude by returning to the sense of pleasure at the appearance of so many valuable new studies, many of them focusing closely upon the forms of the buildings themselves. The idea of “reading,” in as much as it expresses a personal view, provides an effective platform for the first volume under review; however, the notion of architecture as “language” needs further qualification. The higher level of specificity in Crossley’s introduction may draw more criticisms. On the one hand, readers are invited to embrace an open-ended concept of variety, then offered the disturbing biological metaphor of the “hybrid,” followed by the proposal of a coherent “style” that somehow “spreads” across “Europe”: “Little wonder that the dazzling imagery and the gravity-defying architecture of Rayonnant had, by the year 1300, become a truly international style, moving speedily from its homeland in northern France to England, northern Spain, the Rhineland, and the Danube” (12). Such language is reminiscent of Bony, who represented the idea of elements of the Gothic, namely, pointed arches and rib vaults, somehow travelling across the map of Europe to install themselves in the Ile-de-France.

While the great synthesizing narrative of Gothic may appear to remain elusive, these two collections of essays reward the reader with multiple insights into a wide range of issues and buildings, some at the center of traditional narratives, and others little-known even by the specialist. Contributors, organizers, and editors deserve congratulations.