Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol.original_ [20]
Some of the richest, purely ornamental drawings ever produced are contained in the illuminated gospel called the Book of Kells (760-820), collection of Trinity College, Dublin, produced by Irish monks. The text was highly embellished with colorful abstract patterns. Enormous letters, sometimes composed of interlacing whorls and fantastic animal imagery, cover entire pages.
GOTHIC ART: HEIGHT AND LIGHT
The pinnacle of Middle Ages artistic achievement, rivaling the wonders of ancient Greece and Rome, was the Gothic cathedral. In fact, these “stone Bibles” even surpassed Classical architecture in terms of technological daring. From 1200 to 1500, medieval builders erected these intricate structures, with soaring interiors unprecedented in world architecture.
What made the Gothic cathedral possible were two engineering breakthroughs: ribbed vaulting and external supports called flying buttresses. Applying such point supports where necessary allowed builders to forgo solid walls pierced by narrow windows for skeletal walls with huge stained glass windows flooding the interior with light. Gothic cathedrals acknowledged no Dark Ages. Their evolution was a continuous expansion of light, until finally walls were so perforated as to be almost mullions framing immense fields of colored, story-telling glass.
In addition to the latticelike quality of Gothic cathedral walls (with an effect like “petrified lace,” as the writer William Faulkner said), verticality characterized Gothic architecture. Builders used the pointed arch, which increased both the reality and illusion of greater height. Architects vied for the highest naves (at Amiens, the nave reached an extreme height of 144 feet). When, as often happened, ambition outstripped technical skill and the naves collapsed, church members tirelessly rebuilt them.
Gothic cathedrals were such a symbol of civic pride that an invader’s worst insult was to pull down the tower of a conquered town’s cathedral. Communal devotion to the buildings was so intense that all segments of the population participated in construction. Lords and ladies, in worshipful silence, worked alongside butchers and masons, dragging carts loaded with stone from quarries. Buildings were so elaborate that construction literally took ages — six centuries for Cologne Cathedral — which explains why some seem a hodge-podge of successive styles.
Sainte-Chapelle, 13th century, Paris. More than three-fourths of the exterior structure is composed of stained glass, filling the interior with rose-violet light.
Choir of Beauvais Cathedral, begun 1272. Beauvais Cathedral’s linear design and pointed arches are characteristic of Gothic architecture.
GOTHIC BUILDING BLOCKS
VAULT - arched ceiling
NAVE - main part of church interior
FLYING BUTTRESSES - exterior masonry bridges supporting walls
RIBBED VAULT - molded stone ribs covering seams of groin vaults
CLERESTORY - nave wall lit by windows
ROSE WINDOW - circular window filled with stained glass
TRACERY - stone armature decorating windows
THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE. Medieval theologians believed a church’s beauty would inspire parishioners to meditation and belief. As a result, churches were much more than just assembly halls. They were texts, with volumes of ornaments preaching the path to salvation. The chief forms of inspirational decoration in Gothic cathedrals were sculpture, stained glass, and tapestries.
SCULPTURE: LONG AND LEAN. Cathedral exteriors displayed carved Biblical tales. The Early Gothic sculptures of Chartres (pronounced shartr) and the High Gothic stone figures of Reims (pronounced ranz) Cathedral show the evolution of medieval art.
The Chartres figures of Old Testament