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The church in the Middle Ages was a place that all people, regardless of
class, could belong to. As a source of unity, its influence on art and
architecture was great during this time. As society drew away from the feudal
system of the Romanesque period, a new spirit of human individualism began to
take hold; alas, the birth of Gothic.
Here, the Church became a place where
humanity became more acceptable, alas becoming the ideal place to visual such
new ideals. The beauty and elegance of Gothic architecture is depicted most in
the great cathedrals of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries—St. Denis, Notre Dame,
Chartres, Salisbury, Durham, Amiens, and more. The experience of looking at one
of the great gothic cathedrals is to look up towards God. Indeed, most Gothic
structures emphasize the vertical, drawing one’s eyes upwards toward the heavens
with the awesomeness of God.
These cathedrals were built with towering spires,
pointed arches and flying buttresses giving impressions of harmony and
luminosity. One of the major accomplishments of the 12th and 13th centuries was
to develop the engineering mastery of the ribbed vault, pointed arch and flying
buttress to create a great cathedral that is at once taller, lighter, wider, and
more elegant than the ones before.
Even though the pointed arch could support
more weight than its predecessors, there was still the problem of finding a way
to support the heavy masonry ceiling vaults over wide spans. In order to support
the outward thrust of barrel vaults, vertical support walls have to be very
thick and heavy.
What makes possible the extensive use of ribbed vaulting and
pointed arches to “open” and “lighten” the walls and space of the cathedral is
the flying buttress—“an arched bridge above the aisle roof that extends from the
upper nave wall, where the lateral thrust of the main vault is greatest, down to
a solid pier.” [Jansen, History of Art, p. 407].
The effect is to add structural
strength and solidity to the building. The visual appearance of changes from the
Early and Later or High Gothic are clear, as each cathedral became increasingly
narrower and taller. For instance, compare the nave elevations of Notre-Dame to
Amiens [Text, fig. 442, p. 333], the pointed arches of Amiens are significantly
taller and narrower than the much earlier Notre Dame.
The mastery of the flying
buttress allowed medieval builders to construct taller and more elegant looking
buildings with more complex ground plans. Encyclopedia Britannica ’97 describes
the “flying” effect of this buttress of hiding the masonry supports of the
structure: “a semi-detached curved pier connects with an arch to a wall and
extends (or “flies”) to the ground or a pier some distance away.
The delicate
elegance of Gothic cathedrals is different from the “Heavy buttresses jutting
out between the chapels” of Romanesque churches,. From the outside, aesthetic
consideration of the flying buttresses was significant and “its shape could
express support…according to the designer’s sense of style.”
The flying buttress
was first used on a monumental scale at Notre Dame From the outsider the flying
buttresses create a seemingly bewildering mass of soaring props, struts, and
buttresses, yet blend in with the rich sculpture and elaborate portals of the
West façade, giving the appearance of a three-story layout. [Text. P. 325-326,
fig. 429 ( This contrasts visually with the plans that show the buttresses “as
massive blocks of masonry that stick out from the building like a row of teeth.”
[Text. P. 325, Fig. 426].)
At Chartres the flying buttress is more unique, the
half arch is made of smaller arches that give more height to the already
narrower and more vertical walls of the nave., as well as blending in with the
colonnaded triforium wall of the nave [Text, p. 329, fig. 434, fib. 437]. In
England, the flying buttress appears almost as an “afterthought” where
verticality is not as important. {English Gothic style emphasizes a “long, low,
sprawling” character compared to the compact, vertical of French Gothic. [Text.
P. 336]) Flying Buttresses also made the personification of Gothic art possible,
as it allowed for almost no structure support in the walls.
The flying buttress
lends the interior illusion of being “amazingly airy and weightless” because the
masonry supports are hidden and visible only from the outside. Since flying
buttresses are perpendicular to the walls, intervening wall spaces could be
“opened” up between the buttresses.
As the walls were thinner, stained glass
windows gradually came to replace masonry. Later Gothic cathedrals appear to be
only thin skeletal frames of masonry. Wall surfaces of High Gothic churches thus
have the appearance of transparent and weightless curtains.
The spiritual and
mysterious quality of light is an important element of the religious symbolism
of Gothic cathedrals.].While the stained, colored glass windows of this period
gave the churches novel lighting affects, they did not make the churches
“lighter” (the glass was heavily colored).
While the use of stained glass was
limited during the Romanesque period, the first extensive use as in the
rebuilding of St. Denis. As cathedrals became taller and wider, windows became
larger to allow more space for stained glass. T
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