2024-11-19
''[...] and the praiseworthy addition of a circular ring of chapels, by means of which the whole church shines with the marvellous and incessant light of the penetrating windows, permeating the inner beauty'' was how the French abbot Suger described the beauty and function of the then newly developed architecture in the 12th century. He did not yet know that it would be called Gothic. Who was Abbot Suger, and what do you need to know about Gothic architecture?
Gothic manifested itself in all the arts known in the Middle Ages: architecture, sculpture, and painting. However, it is the architecture that most impresses the modern viewer, above all its scale and uniqueness. In a nutshell, Gothic architecture evolved from a combination of the Burgundian pointed arch and the Norman Romanesque vaults. It is the pointed arch and cross-ribbed vaults that lie at the heart of the architectural breakthrough initiated by the construction of the choir of the Basilica of Saint-Denis in Paris, consecrated in 1144. Significantly, the architect working on the Paris completion used a system of buttresses that carried the weight of the vaults on themselves. The buttresses also allowed for much more giant window openings, which could be glazed with much larger expanses of stained glass.
The enlargement of the window openings made the Gothic church more luminous, and it was this aspect that Abbot Suger admired in the quote at the beginning of this article. He oversaw the construction of the choir of the Basilica of Saint-Denis and also described the treasures in the church and the extension itself. Interestingly, he was depicted on one of the stained-glass windows in the church. He went down in history as one of the leading historians of his time, who, among other things, dealt with Louis VII.
An integral part of Gothic architecture, in addition to the pointed arch, cross-ribbed vaults and buttresses, is the tracery, an architectural pattern carved from stone or made from bricks, used to fill a Gothic window. Based on its developmental phases, architectural historians periodize Gothic architecture. The development phases include Early Gothic (c. 1150-1240), Mature Gothic (c. 1240-1350) and Flamboyant Gothic (1350-1500).
The stained-glass window (placed in a tracery) usually showed fragments of biblical stories. The artists often planned complex content programmes in the windows. In Charters Cathedral, for example, the stained-glass windows of the "lower", were like a book - beginning in the north aisle with Genesis and ending in the south side aisle with the image of St John, who wrote the apocalypse. In addition to compositions with saints or scenes from the Bible, there are also quatrefoils with representations of the founders or coats of arms and even scenes from everyday life.