Gothic Art in France ..........................................................................

Lecture 4

The term Gothic is so well-known, and so often used as a catch-all

category for the later Middle Ages and, especially, for the greatly

admired cathedrals of the period, that it is easy to forget that it was

coined as a slur by Italian writers of the Renaissance.

T

o them, the foreign style was in such conÀ ict with the Humanistic
principles of their art in the 15th and 16th centuries that it seemed like
another invasion of the Goths, the barbarians who had raided Italy
and precipitated the fall of the Roman Empire.

Architecturally, the Gothic style evolved from the Romanesque, and one of
the key transitional monuments is the famous cathedral of Notre-Dame in
Paris. Notre Dame means “Our Lady,” that is, the Virgin Mary. Our example
shows the Notre-Dame of Paris façade 1163–1250.) This ensemble view is
rare among such renowned buildings because they are often hemmed in by
later urban environments. Because the cathedral sits on an island, Notre-
Dame offers this sweeping view from the south bank of the Seine.

The Notre-Dame façade shows the symmetrical harmony of the square towers
and reminds us of the façade of St. Etienne at Caen. The St. Etienne façade
is mostly solid masonry with relatively small doors and windows punched
through it, whereas the Notre-Dame façade has been opened up by three
deep portals, a huge rose window, carved lace-like gables above the portals,
and a gallery of sculptured ¿ gures below the rose window. The remarkable
opening of the architectural elements gives the façade a comparatively
lighter appearance. Another feature of the Notre-Dame façade is its clarity
and lucidity in architectural parts, symmetry, and proportion.

We now turn to the nave of Notre-Dame. It would not have been possible
to penetrate so much of the façade if the front and the lateral walls of the
cathedral had to support all the weight of the stone vaults. The weight of
the vaulting of a great church is immense and pushes the walls outward.
Thus, in Romanesque churches, walls needed additional thickening—salient