Branner, Robert, ed. Gothic Architecture. New York: Braziller, 1961.
Focillon, Henri. The Art of the West, ed. Jean Bony, 2 vols. Greenwich: New York Graphic Society,
1963.
Frankl, Paul. The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations Through Eight Centuries. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1960.
Grodecki, Louis. Gothic Architecture. NewYork: Abrams, 1978.
Kimpel, Dieter, and Robert Suckale. Die gotische Architektur in Frankreich, 1130–1270. Munich:
Hirmer, 1985.
Le Goff, Jacques, and René Rémond. Histoire de la France religieuse. I. Des dieux de la Gaule a
la papauté d’Avignon. Paris: Seuil, 1988.
Mark, Robert. Gothic Structural Experimentation. Cambridge: MIT, 1982.
Panofsky, Erwin. Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism. Latrobe: Archabbey, 1951.
Radding, Charles, and William W.Clark. Medieval Architecture, Medieval Learning. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1992.
Recht, Roland, et al. Les bâtisseurs des cathédrales gothiques. Strasbourg: Musées de la Ville de
Strasbourg, 1989.
Sanfaçon, Roland. L’architecture flamboyante en France. Laval: Presses de l’Université de Laval,
1971.
Wilson, Christopher. The Gothic Cathedral. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990.
GOTHIC ART
. The origins and development of French Gothic art are closely tied to architecture.
Gothic cathedrals and chapels provided the structural context for monumental sculpture
and stained glass. Metalwork, ivories, paintings in manuscripts or on panels, and textiles
were the furnishings that complemented and completed both religious and secular
architecture. The close alliance between architecture and the visual arts appears in the
similarity of design principles based on geometric proportions and in representations of
architectural motifs and structures in metalwork, ivories, stained glass, and painting.
The beginnings of the Gothic style in stained glass and sculpture are connected with
Early Gothic architecture. The chevet of Saint-Denis (ca. 1144) contained stained-glass
windows that not only were integral to the more skeletal structural principles but were
also a key el-ement in the aesthetics of light articulated by Abbot Suger. The west façade
of Saint-Denis contained a sculptural program that represented a departure from
Romanesque aesthetic. Two of the three portals had sculpted tympana (the third had a
mosaic), and jamb statues were attached to the vertical supports. The placement of
sculpture more logically reflected the vertical and horizontal divisions of the architecture,
the figures had more spatial autonomy, and the iconographic program was more
comprehensive.
Because of the destruction that Saint-Denis suffered during the Revolution, these new
elements are best preserved on the west façade of Chartres cathedral (ca. 1150). The
three-portal façade with jambs, tympana, and archivolts shows the new stylistic
principles. In the central tympanum, the apocalyptic Christ displays a calm visage, and
his body has a three-dimensional unity that softly falling drapery articulates. The jamb
figures exhibit a tight columnar shape, but their forms are attached in front of the column
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