GOTH, the root of Gothic, is at an extreme that belies the glory and supercilious contours of the twelfth century churches in France such as the ecclesiological masterpiece Notre Dame de Paris. Goth, then, was a word which did not mean a madcap ethereal structure reaching toward the heights of God in his heaven, but rather framed a darker time, when men wore more beastlike, when they believed in godliness to a fault, inasmuch as this animalistic blind faith bled into the very lines of their architecture. As the more minimalist styles such as Greek were being revived, anything embracing the bold, Saint-Étiennen Basilica-like air of flying buttresses and high tracery, anything daring to emblazon its ceilings in vivid trefoils and quatofoils, raised geometric triangular ridges or beams was referred to as Gothic in a most negative and belittling way, as it was of course only natural to automatically take issue with an earlier age, sometimes called the Middle Ages, or, to strike a most sour chord, Medieval Times.
Yet, the term stuck, and over time has lost its negative tonality. Meantime, as the spare-no-expense structures took form all over the known world, from Australia to Scotland, Gothic has become as much anything else, a feeling, a notion, a way of life. The idea being, if someone describes a structure as Gothic these days, if this someone is not a wheedling pedantic blowhard, then the mind and soul of a person walking into said structure will lift in keeping with the skyscraping-ceilings as the ecclesiological spirit attempts to showcase a kind of heaven far and away more lovely that the finite banality of mortal existence.
Although it may have started in the ninth or tenth century (see Saint-Étiennen Basilica) Gothic style is not some dead art, as The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is still in progress to this very minute, though it began many years ago. From its narthex to it nave, its stain glass and apse, the almost infinite cathedral transports one to an age before the motor car and the computer, to a day when the will to create a house of our Lord would stop at nothing, would best heights put down before (i.e. St. John's The Divine promises to be larger in every way than any other Church in the world, save one) all in the febrile cooperation to reflect, or dimly reflect anyhow, the purest dream of heaven. Where Romanesque Cathedrals were dramatic, they only reached so high, and had only slits for windows, whereas the Gothic wonders were able to go up and up and up and up by leaning on their flying buttress, built outward from the exterior walls, invented for the very purpose of supporting unbelievable heights. And instead of slits, the Gothic template demanded yards and square yards of stained glass, to reveal-in so many colors-The Light! Whether on not the decrepit souls entering and gazing upon this light wanted to believe in it, and of this light, that of course remains the intangible divide between the human spirit and the raw stone and glass structures built by the hands of man.
If one wished to pin the "origin" of the Gothic age of architecture on an individual visionary, it might be Abbot Suger who in fact conceived of the notion of the flying buttress in order to support higher and less bulky walls, and stained glass windows. The stained glass became a blank canvass upon which to illustrate the colorful tales of the bible. Abbot Suger was a very important historian in his day, having served both King Louis VI and King Louis VII in various advisory positions, not the least of which was social director, dictating to whom the great kings should marry and who they should not divorce. Naturally the kings did not adhere to everything he said, hence Louis VII divorced his wife Eleanor of Aquataine when Abbot Suger insinuated he would be a fool to do so. The King escaped Eleanor nonetheless, though he did indeed listen more astutely to Abbot Suger's war strategies that would serve France well in the years following. Indeed enriching Abbot Suger himself, to the degree he ended up with enough land and riches to be able to act upon his regal fantasy of the very first truly Gothic Church called the Basilica of St. Denis. It became an integral piece of Gallic pageantry on through the ages, at least the pageantry of death, as most every French King thereafter was buried at the Basilica of St. Denis. Thus the age of Gothic Architecture, emblematic of riches beyond compare, and the doable will of creating heaven on earth, was born.
Notable characteristics, the universal earmarks of all things Gothic, though perhaps collected from earlier civilizations, are ribbed vaulting and the pointed arch. Both of these features were essential in the making of incredibly high ceilings, and ceilings which all wore a sort of ribbed signature, a pointed vaultedness, that put them squarely in the Gothic realm. Still these ceilings would not be sustainable without the most famous of all Gothic characteristics, the Flying Buttress. In short, the weight of the walls and brilliant expanses of ceiling was distributed to these exterior structures, or shoulders, aka buttresses, to free the walls themselves of this function. Only through this feat of engineering were the great Churches able to reach such soaring extremes, and capable of entertaining glass windows, all of which contributed to the ability of natural light to become the icing on the cake of these visual delicacies.
In terms of the floor plan, the Gothic church was typically outfitted with a nave, with aisles all around, a choir, encircled by an ambulatory with chapels. The exterior was for the most part dominated by towers, usually twin. The towering façade was only corrupted by a means of entry or portal. These grand doors, gigantic, like doors created for a giant's giant, were dripping with sculptures. High above it all, usually at the transept end, or front of the edifice, was the rose or wheel window, composed of so many intricate traceries of metal and glass. The traceries radiated outward in great symmetry, not unlike, and so the name, a rose flower. St. Quen at Rouen, went to the extreme of indeed copying a rose opening, petal by meticulous petal, and it is most likely from this Benedictine monastery of Normandy, built before the French Revolution, that the term became part of the Gothic vernacular.
Gothic style, per se, originated in Italy and dominated Europe for some two centuries before the eclipse of the Renaissance period.
Dark oil paintings had the common theme, in general, of bringing an age out of the darkness of the uncivilized Dark Ages, into the light and naturalism of a more prosperous time. Some of the more notable artists of the time include Agostino di Giovanni, - -
- Altichiero, -
- Andrea da Firenze, - 1343 - 1379
- Antelami, Benedetto -
- Arnolfo di Cambio, -
- Beauneveu, Andre - 1335 - 1403
- Borrassa, Luis - 1350 - 1424
- Broederlam, Melchior - 1355 - 1411
- Cenni di Francesco di ser Cenni, - 1369 - 1415
- Ferrari, Defendente -
- Grunewald, Matthias - 1470 - 1528
- Guariento di Arpo, -
- Lorenzo Monaco, - 1370 - 1425
- Malouel, Jean - 1365 - 1415
- Pisano, Andrea - 1290 - 1349
- Pisano, Giovanni - 1250 - 1319
- Pisano, Nicola - 1220 - 1284
Many of these artists were commissioned by the kings of political leaders, thus an artist was as professional as, say, a senator or governor, and forsooth handsomely paid as well! Art became the conduit between a world of feudalism and darkness, to a whole new planet of lightness of being, where a thing called civilzation was able to build a space bold and intelligent enough, and selfless enough, to create Gothic Cathedrals to last for time immemorial.
Richard Upjohn was the gent who could perhaps be named as the founder of the Gothic Revival period. A period that began in 1830 and ran until around 1860 in the main, but of course continues forward into the present. Upjohn is best remembered for The Trinity Church in New York City, consecrated in 1846 and St. Paul's Cathedral in Buffalo, New York.
Upjohn, while giving us his buildings, did not necessarily wish to reveal his trade secrets. This was achieved by Alexander Jackson Davis who published a masterwork called Rural Residences which was a widely disturbed manual, a how-to tome, which outlined floor plans and three-dimensional views for the construction magnates to embrace the style and grant them the road maps to implement this style. Thereto, he created a physical model in Tarrytown, New York, which broke down the mysteries and showed the masses the way to the Gothic style. Following this published work, and others, a flowering of wooden gothic buildings became to materialize in rural New York. Frederick Law Olmstead, the New York power broker and designer of such things as Prospect Park and Central Park, was also a player in this gothic revival period. Some of the basic characteristics of these buildings were huge dormer windows, gable roofs, chimney pots, aka chimney pots, which were sculptures to fancifully top off the common brick chimney. Also, the dripstone, or hood mold, was a stone hood to fasten about the windows to throw off rain and to dress up the lines in stone contours, and drips. Another feature termed Gothic revival is the gingerbread detailing found in Martha's Vineyard and elsewhere, where all the trim surrounding the porch of a house is connected by wheels and bars of wood that appear like fat spider webs of exquisite detail.
Perhaps the most famous use of Gothic revivalism, and perhaps why some hip writers or headline autuers supplant the word Gothic for New York itself, changing it slightly to Gotham, is the Brooklyn Bridge. Created by John and Washington Roebling, it spans the East River, uniting Long Island's western tip where a city called Brooklyn rose up along the shore, to Manhattan, city of cities. Thus, this gateway, the terribly visible road to New York City, by embracing the Pointed Arch of Gothic origin, has given the city its nickname and, on some level, its very identity. Devoid of the religious overtones that helped to create the style, throwing off the shackles of a term once meant to deride barbarians, the Brooklyn Bridge remains an awe-inspiring structure that unites the functionality of a bridge with the resonant detail of an architecture that pines for the universe of heaven insignificant mankind can but imagine.