Gothic: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting

523 Pages·2004·38.45 MB·English

by  Rolf Toman

Gothic art originated around 1140 in the Ile-de.
France. Initially confined to the cathedrals and the
most important abbeys of this region, it was soon to
be regarded as a model for the rest of France and
finally for Europe as a whole. The new style was
not solely confined to the sacral domain, but rather
increasingly invaded the secular and private
spheres. Gothic is the first art-historical epoch from
which art works of all genres have survi.ved.
Prominent among these remarkable works are the
numerous richly-varied cathedrals, the abbeys and
town churches with their sequences of sculptures,
colorful windows, wall paintings, gold work and
book illuminations. Alongside these, the diverse
town sites, the castles and palaces with their elabo
rate and artistic furnishings, continue to amaze the
modern viewer.
The present volume describes the development of
Gothic in all its diversity. Beginning with the initial
flourishing of Gothic architecture in France, the
book traces its early reception in neighboring coun
tries. Individual essays are devoted to the specific
formal development of Gothic architecture in
England, the "German-speaking countries," Italy,
Spain, Portugal, northern and eastern Europe as
well as texts on late Gothic architecture in France
and the Netherlands. The history of Gothic sculp
ture and painting with its changing pictorial themes
and representational forms is also presented with
reference to specific countries. Separate contribu
tions on stained glass and gold work and individual
studies devoted to special themes - to the Cathar
heresy, to the Papal Palace in Avignon, to urban
development, to technical knowledge - complete
the period's overview.
This book's many illustrations match the wide
subject range of the Gothic period; approximately
two-thirds of the 780 illustrations were especially
photographed for this volume. The various art·
historical contributions were written exclusively
by experts.
FRONT COVER:
Assisi, Upper Church of San Francesco, 1228-53
Interior view
Photo: © 1990, Photo Scala, Florenz
BACK COVER:
Lausanne, Notre-Dame Cathedral
begun last quarter of the 12th century
Painted columns and arch
Photo: Achim Bednorz
COVER DESIGN:
Carol Stoffel
The Art of
GOTHIC

130: 15 ='fl
r
+3
The Art of
Architecture• Sculpture• Painting
Edited by Rolf Toman
Photography by Achim Bednorz
KONEMANN
scan: The Stainless Steel Cat
FRONTISPIECE:
Wells Cathedral
Steps to chapter house
© 2004 KONEMANN*, an imprint of Tandem Verlag GmbH, Ki:inigswinter
Project coordinator and producer: Rolf Toman, Esperaza;
Birgit Beyer, Cologne; Barbara Bomgasser, Paris
Photography: Achim Bednorz, Cologne
Diagrams: Pablo de la Riestra, Marburg
Picture research: Barbara Linz, Sylvia Mayer
Cover design: Carol Stoffel
Original title: Die Kunst der Gotik
ISBN 3-8331-1038-4
© 2004 for the English edition
KONEMANN*, an imprint of Tandem Verlag GmbH, Ki:inigswinter
Translation from German: Christian von Arnim, Paul Aston,
Helen Atkins, Peter Barton, Sandra Harper
English-language editor: Chris Murray
Managing editor: Bettina Kaufmann
Project coordinator: Jackie Dobbyne
Proofreader: Shayne Mitchell
Typesetting: Goodfellow & Egan Publishing Management, Cambridge
*KONEMANN is a registered trademark of Tandem Verlag GmbH
Printed in EU
ISBN 3-~331-1168-2
10987654321
X IX VIII VII VI V IV III II I
Contents
Rolf Toman Introduction 6
Pablo de la Riestra Elements of Religious and Secular Gothic Architecture 18
Bruno Klein The Beginnings of Gothic Architecture in France and its Neighbors 28
Barbara Borngasser The Cathar Heresy in Southern France 116
Ute Engel Gothic Architecture in England 118
Christian Freigang Medieval Building Practice 154
Peter Kurmann Late Gothic Architecture in France and the Netherlands 156
Christian Freigang The Papal Palace in Avignon 188
Pablo de la Riestra Gothic Architecture of the "German Lands" 190
Pablo de la Riestra Gothic Architecture in Scandinavia and East-Central Europe 236
Ehrenfried Kluckert Medieval Castles, Knights, and Courtly Love 240
Barbara Borngasser Gothic Architecture in Italy 242
Barbara Borngasser Florence and Siena: Communal Rivalry 252
Alick McLean Medieval Cities 262
Barbara Borngasser Late Gothic Architecture in Spain and Portugal 266
Uwe Geese Gothic Sculpture in France, Italy, Germany, and England 300
Regine Abegg Gothic Sculpture in Spain and Portugal 372
Ehrenfried Kluckert Gothic Painting 386
Ehrenfried Kluckert Subjectivity, Beauty and Nature: Medieval Theories of Art 394
Ehrenfried Kluckert Architectural Motifs in Painting Around 1400 402
Ehrenfried Kluckert Narrative Motifs in the Work of Hans Memling 420
Ehrenfried Kluckert Visions of Heaven and Hell in the Work of Hieronymus Bosch 424
Ehrenfried Kluckert Gold, Light and Color: Konrad Mitz 438
Ehrenfried Kluckert The Depictions of Visions and Visual Perception 439
Ehrenfried Kluckert The Path to Individualism 454
Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz Gothic Stained Glass 468
Ehrenfried Kluckert Medieval Learning and the Arts 484
Harald Wolter-van dem Gothic Goldwork 486
Knesebeck
Appendix 501

OPPOSITE: Chartres, Cathedral of Notre-Dame,
Bourges, Cathedral of St.-Etienne, begun after the fire of 1194
begun late 12th century View from the south
Ambulatory
Rolf Toman
Introduction
"Anyone making their way to Chartres can see from a distance of
some thirty kilometers, and with many hours of walking still ahead,
just how this city crowns the area solely through the great mass of its
cathedral with its two towers-it is a city-cathedral. It was a busy city
throughout the Middle Ages because of its cathedral, and today the
town is an image of what a cathedral town once was. And that was? •
- -,,
It was a world which lived through and with its cathedral, where
houses huddled below the cathedral and where streets converged at
the cathedral, where people turned from their fields, their meadows,
or their villages to gaze at the cathedral. .. The peasant might inhabit
a lowly hut and the knight a castle, but both shared in the life of the
cathedral to the same extent and with the same feelings during its
long-drawn-out construction over the centuries, during its slow rise ...
Everyone without exception shared the common life of the cathedral.
No man was imprisoned in his own poverty at night without being
aware that outside, whether near or far, he too possessed riches."
In this observation from his Open Diary 1929-1959, the Italian element: his book on cathedrals is closely linked, in date and in
writer Elio Vittorini expresses a common longing for an ideal world, philosophy, with his ultra-conservative work on cultural criticism,
an intact world in which meaning is implicit. The 19th-century Art in Crisis: The Lost Center (1957, original German 1948), whose
Romantics (Victor Hugo, Fran~ois Rene Chateaubriand, Friedrich dubious racial and ideological underpinnings are unmistakable.
Schlegel, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, John Ruskin, and many others) The affinity between conservative cultural criticism and an
were also deeply moved by the sight of Gothic cathedrals, and the inflated reverence for Gothic has a long tradition in Germany. That
Romantics' intense vision of the spirituality and transcendent Gothic lends itself to ideology in this way is closely connected with
character of the vast and soaring spaces of Gothic cathedrals has the long-standing belief that Gothic, in contrast to Romanesque, is
lasted to the present day. It is apparent, for instance, in the noted the true German style. Based on an error, this appropriation of
20th-century scholar of Gothic Hans Jantzen (from whose The Gothic was, in the final analysis, "founded in the art theory of the
Gothic of the West this introductory quotation from Vittorini has Italian Renaissance, which had considered medieval art in general to
been taken), who is still part of the Romantic tradition. This is be an essentially 'German' or-which comes to the same thing
evident in such characteristic assertions that in Gothic architecture Gothic style, from which the new Renaissance art of Italy had now
"something solid is being removed from its natural surroundings by finally liberated itself. As late as around 1800, equating Gothic with
something incorporeal, divested of weight and made to soar German was a topos of European culture, one that was scarcely ques
upwards," as well as by his famous analysis of the "diaphanous tioned. From this there arose in Germany a national enthusiasm for
structure" of the Gothic wall and his talk of "space as a symbol of the everything Gothic, in which people thought they saw the greatest
spaceless." The theme is always the transcendent. achievement of their forebears ... But then art history, which was just
This aspect of the Gothic cathedral was also important to the emerging as a discipline, quickly established that Gothic, especially
scholar Hans Sedlmayr, who shortly after World War II published his the Gothic cathedral, was one of the original achievements of
celebrated study, The Emergence of the Cathedral (1950). Sedlmayr Germany's arch-enemy of the time, France. This bitter recognition led
was attempting to offset the darkness of his own time with the shining to a change of attitude in the evaluation of the German Middle Ages"
light of the cathedral, which he saw as a complex and multifaceted (Schutz and Muller).
work that marked a high point of European art. Just as Jantzen had The reason for this disillusionment lay in thinking in terms of
"discovered" the diaphanous wall structure, so Sedlmayr, turning his national superiority, an error from which even some art historians
gaze upwards to the vaults, identified what he called the "baldachin were not immune. It is astonishing-and important to remember
system" of Gothic cathedrals (the vaults looking like a canopy just how stubbornly this brooding over the ethnic origins of Gothic
supported by slender columns). But alongside all the structural anal persisted. Such views can be detected even in Sedlmayr's book on
ysis and the metaphysical interpretation, Sedlmayr added another cathedrals, though they are more subtle than the ones in circulation
7
St.-Denis, former Benedictine abbey
church, detail of stained-glass window
with Abbot Suger at the feet of the Virgin
in Nazi Germany, and seemingly expressed in more civilized terms. In
Sedlmayr's summary of his deliberations on the origin of the Gothic
cathedral we are told: "For the complete structure of the cathedral,
the north Germanic ('Nordic') element provided the structural
component, the skeleton, as it were. The so-called Celtic ('Western')
element provided the 'Poetic.' And the Mediterranean ('Southern')
element provided the fully rounded, human component... Histori
cally these elements did not appear simultaneously during the
construction of the cathedral, but in this sequence... The third
element, however, was already in play from the beginning but
initially superimposed on the others and largely ineffective. Only
after 1180 does it flourish, determining the 'classic phase' of the
cathedral, but from as early as 1250 onwards it was firmly
suppressed again. The 'classic' cathedral is thus one of the most
magnificently successful fusions of the characters of three peoples. In
art it creates 'Frenchness,' and in this very fusion is European in the
highest sense." Today this biological, ethnic, and racial delving or
as Wilhelm Worringer named and practiced it-this delving into "the
psyche of mankind" in order to explain the "essence of the cathe
dral" is considered obsolete.
A major obstacle in our attempt to understand the art and life of
the Middle Ages is the difficulty of putting ourselves into the intellec
tual and emotional world of the men and women of the period. The
decisive barrier to our understanding is presented by medieval Chris
tianity, which, embracing every aspect of life, completely determined
the thinking and feeling of the period. Today we are even farther away
from this aspect of medieval life than the Romantics were. This diffi that of his neighbors to the southwest and east, the counts of Cham
culty was noted by Sedlmayr in his afterword published in 1976 in a pagne. What distinguished him from the other feudal lords, however,
reprint of his book on cathedrals. For Sedlmayr there was no point in and gave him greater authority, was the sacred character conferred
saying "We must look at the cathedral through the eyes of medieval on him when, at his coronation, he was anointed with holy oil.
people" because these people would inevitably be an abstraction. This potential was something which Suger of St.-Denis (ca.
Instead, he suggested "looking at the cathedral through the eyes of its 1081-1151), one of the leading figures of France in the 12th century,
builders, with the eyes of Suger and his architects." This was a clear knew how to exploit. Although of humble origin, he was a childhood
cut task and methods could be developed to achieve it. Even if friend of Louis VI from the time of their common monastic
Sedlmayr's optimism is not something we can fully share, it is this upbringing in the abbey of St.-Denis, and he was a confidant, advisor
approach we have taken here; and we can begin by turning our atten and diplomat in the service of both Louis VI ( 1108-3 7) and Louis VII
tion to the origins of Gothic and the central role played by Abbot (1137-80). When Louis VII and his queen took part in the Second
Suger of St.-Denis. On this, at least, art historians are in agreement. Crusade from 1147 to 1149 he appointed Suger his regent, a role
Suger performed extremely well. As the monk Willelmus, Suger's
Abbot Suger of St.-Denis: The Beginnings of Gothic biographer, reports, from that time on Suger was known as "the
Gothic is of French origin. It emerged around 1140 in the small father of the fatherland." He made the strengthening of the French
kingdom, which already bore the name Francia, that occupied the monarchy his life's work. Aware that the temporal power of the
area between Compiegne and Bourges, and that had Paris, the royal French king was greatly restricted, he knew that it was vital to
city, as its center. The territory on which the most impressive cathe increase the monarchy's spiritual prestige. Suger's efforts were aimed
drals in the new Gothic style were to be built in quick succession was at exactly this.
insignificant compared with present-day France, and the power of When he became abbot of St.-Denis in 1122, Suger, along with
the French king-though not the prestige-was still slight. His polit all his other tasks, doggedly pursued his dream of restoring the
ical and economic power took second place to that of the dukes of abbey's former prestige by renovating the long-neglected fabric of the
Normandy, who were at the same time kings of England, and also to church. The church had already been a royal burial place under the
8