Architecture notes

GOTHIC READINGS NOTES II

BRANNER, St. Louis and the Court Style in Gothic Architecture 

• The Court Style
• The contemporary prestige of French culture, the eminence of the king of France among the rulers of Europe and the unique position occupied by the city
• Louis IX = the king earthly kings, both because of his heavenly anointment and because of his power and military prominence
• The idea to fix the capital was unusual in medieval Europe, for according to the feudal concept of monarchy the government was lodged in the person of the ruler, and he was itinerant.
• The Capetians had made Paris their main residence in the 12th century
• The presence of the king drew the nobility and clergy to the city and they contributed in no mean way to its brilliance.
• Paris = fountain of science, universities
• King, nobles, prelates, civil servants, students all required services and goods and this stimulated trade and industry in the city
• Within the all the city continued to expand, reflecting the constant rise in both population and economy
• The king sponsored three kinds of architecture in addition to civil works : military, domestic and religious.
• Through the diversity of designs however there can be detected a certain uniformity of approach that seems to reflect a Crown policy toward building
• Royal architectural policy, to the extent that it can be re-established, was not inflexible and several important shifts will be noted in it during the reign of Louis IX.
• The Court Style was not the exclusive creation of the king or his architects but was broadly based and deeply rooted in French tradition

COHEN, “An Indulgence for the Visitor: The Public at the Sainte Chapelle of Paris

• The highly symbolic relic of the crown of thorns (LA SAINTE-COURONNE)
• Served primarily as a private palatine sanctuary
• Was designed for the public as a pilgrimage site in order to encourage devotion to the cult of kings.
• Underlying the notion of privacy and publicity in elite
• In the middle Ages, public representation was essential for the establishment of power = integrated the king with the people.  
• The reign of Louis IX was no exception, he actively contributed to the construction of his own sanctity also for compeling political reason
• The relic of the Corwn of Thorns as a symbol of Christ’s divine rule was an object of central importance to this endeavor
• This unique building was integrated into the well-established phenomenon of mass pilgrimage to important cult sites.
• By means of indulgences, people from all social classes and ranks were encouraged to celebrate at the chapel on a regular basis
• Once there, visitors were indoctrinated with images and words that exalted the king, Paris and France
• By promoting devotion to Louis IX, the royal chapel ultimately worked to unify people under the French ruler
• The public function in Sainte-Chapelle, its seminal role in the 13th century construction of Capetians cult of kings, evidence from lithic, graphic, diplomatic, liturgical and hagiographical sources.
• Chapel’s architecture conveyed to a diverse, public audience
• Indulgences = invite and include the participation of « all people »
• SC role in stational procession show how it was deeply integrated into the public life of the city
• How the liturgy for the Feast of the Crown of Thorns promoted devotion to the cult of kings
• A monument built for public use and royal exaltation = verticality, grandeur of west façade
• Decoration for the medieval spectator
• Merchant stall around the Sainte-Chapelle, the area served for different purposes, public sector
• Indulgences functioned as forms of capital exchange
• For attendance, visitors were granted various increments of clemency from their sins
• Regular attendance at SC would have been a spiritually lucrative affair, one that would have encouraged people to visit the sacred site often.
• The indulgences of SC appear to have serves for more than pragmatic financial goal. They publicized the king’s new relics to all the faithful in the kingdom and invited the people to celebrate the feats at SC
• Visual imagery glorified sacral kingship
• Allusion to the divine kingship
• Propagandistic
• SC promoted public devotion to the cult of kings
• Complex relationship the king and his subjects, transforming the king into the saint

WILSON, The Gothic Cathedral

• Westminster paid for by an individual
• Westminster Abbey embodied Henry’s elevated view of the place of kingship within the divinely established order. To his English subjects it was intended to proclaim the king’s roel as God anointed vicar and lord of all men in the kingdom, clergy as well as laity
• The three churches most closely associated with the French kings

• Reims
• St-Denis
• Sainte-Chapelle

• If Westminster succeeded in enhancing Henry’s prestige on the contient it would have been because it was the setting fro the SHRINE of EDWARD the Confessor.
• French-looking example of great church built in England
• Was not French Rayonnant
• Architect = Henry of Reyns

FRANKL, Gothic Architecture

• Wells cathedral = visually all these arches are identical and one does not inquire into their function of their STRUCTURAL significance. Their effect is one of TEXTURE
• The multiplication of tiercerons at Wells is the first definite step towards the Late Gothic Style
• The structural function of the rib is ignored ; the rib becoming an architectural member having a purely aesthetic function
• Pear-shaped profiles (lie almond shape shafts), curves vs ogee ( are intened to eliminate the structural characteristics of arches)
• Gloucester = geometrical fantasy

DAVIS, “Splendor and Peril: The Cathedral of Paris, 1290–1350

• The choir chapels appear as the product of meaningful selection rather than role imitation, a code of opulet forms that signaled the cathedral’s prestige and sanctity
• Ambulatory was transformed into a multifunctional
• Pierre de Chelles and Jehan Ravy
• Architecture no less than nature, radiated with a force that acted on the viewer, thus, we must look for an affective power in the cathderal choir’s carefully calculated optical effects
• Construction of sculpture into architecture = stimulated a process of spiritual illumination
• Calibrated the relationships between structure, space, and imagery to fit new and varied devotional patterns
• For cathedral of Paris =  its bishop and chapter recorded their church’s glorious past through architecture, imagery, and ritual as they built an image of the Celestial City to come.
• The architecture of Notre-Dame enclosed the spaces of worship also performed as an active agent in devotional experience
• The cathedral masons refashioned a choir of remarkable visual unity

WILSON, The Gothic Cathedral  

• German cathedral architecture during the first two thirds of the 13th century was conservative in style and modest in scope
• The nearest thing to a German reproduction of a French Early Gothic cathedral is the church of Limburg.  // Palatine Chapel Aachen
• Madgeburg Cathedral, only German choir with both an ambulatory and radiating chapels = French
• The adoption of a French design for the complete rebuilding of Cologne Cathedral = sublime vision of verticality

JUNG, “Beyond the Barrier: The Unifying Role of the Choir Screen in Gothic Churches

• Far from acting only as social and spatial dividers, choir screen fulfilled a wide variety of incorporative function. Thourgh internal structural elements such as doors and platforms, they united the discrete spaces of choir and nave. Through those same elements, they integrated laity with clergy. The screens as architectural structures are fundamentally complex things faught with paradox, markers of a highly charged site of transition and passage.
• The imagery on screen facades must be understood with respect as much to the lay audiences to whom it was directed physically as to the clerical designers who conceived it. Through a particular stylistic idioms and specialized choices of imagery, choir screen sculpture  addressed itself to and thereby incorporated precisely those nonclerical viewers whom the screens appear structurally to excluded
• This represents a remarkable shift in the function of monumental ecclesiastical sculpture. The primary purpose of these images is not simply to instruct by reminding illiterate people of the events of sacred history, but also to teach through empathy and identification – to draw their viewers into the stories emotionally, both by couching these in solid, easily legible forms.
• West choir screen in Naumburg Cathedral = it appears to consist of thin slices of stone overlaid one on another, creating the illusion of considerable disparity between innermost and outmost surfaces and the effect of openness rather than enclosure
• Choir screen were PERMEABLE by laypeople not only visually but also physically
• // Fresco of S Francesco Assisi
• Laypeople did not perceive the screen as obstacles to visual or physical participation can be seen in the reception and continued use of screens in the early modern era. Indeed, rather than alienating the laity, screen became a tangible sign of lay identity within many churches.
• The figure of crucified Christ flanked by the Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist, hand on the trumeau of the central doorway, close to the ground = as witness of crucifixion = movement of the viewer between image and perceiver, reality and imagination
• The Last Supper Image, focus on not Eucharistic rite but Judas, future perpetrator of the betrayal of Christ.
• The Naumburg reliefs are deeply imbued with reality effects that served to transform traditional Biblical iconography by contemporary reference for viewers who sought images of a world which responded to the values and appearances of their own = biblical narrative were transformed for laypeople who formed their intended audience
• The laypeople came eventually to finance proudly the construction of screens
• Choir screens are powerful, subtle, and beautiful vehicles of communication and community

TRACHTENBERG, “Gothic/Italian “Gothic”: Toward a Redefinition 

• Italy was never really Gothic, but an independent culture with an individual architecture that used Gothic for its own purpose.
• Medieval modernism
• Opposing current of historicism vs modernism
• Romanesque period are works embodying a conflict between historicizing elements, like classical columns, ornament, proportion and massive substantiality and modernist tendency toward bay system, schematization, structural rationalism, attenuated proportion
• Attempted to be both modernist and historicist at the same time.
• The great exception is Italy. Italy was never deeply historicist, bond with ancient heritage
• ECLECTISM = accommodation  and diversity, tolerance of complexity and contradiction in architecture = coexistence of various currents
• Rejected the French modernism as a system, they perceived what can only be called the inherent spirituality of the Gothic as it took form in the great French cathedrals, that is the spiritual content created by the medieval modernist method = convey the spiritual meaning

BENTON, “The design of Siena and Florence Duomos

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