<pCollege of Environmental Design
Department of Architecture, UC Berkeley
Architecture Slide Library
Arch 170A Fall 1995 James Study Aid 25
I. The development of Gothic in France: the Rayonnant style during the reign King Louis IX. The expansion of glazing in the tracery of the windows of the new nave, Abbey Church of St. Denis, begun 1231-81. Further development of the primacy of the window and flattening of wall surfaces in Sainte-Chapelle, 1243-48, built as a reliquary for the crown of thorns, acquired from Constantinople. Upper and lower chapels of building within the royal palace in Paris. Rayonnant the gothic exported throughout Europe across the course of the thirteenth century.
II. Decorative complexity and spatial unity in English 13th and 14th century Gothic cathedrals. Decreasing importance of expression of structure on the interior. Cathedral, Wells , begun c 1200 in the gothic style. 14th-century additions in the Decorated Gothic style which stressed intricately geometric vaults, tracery, and sculptural carving. Four strainer-arches at the crossing, built 1338 -48 by William Joy support the 1315-33 central tower. Net vaulting of choir, begun 1329, also by Joy. Flat east end characteristic of much English gothic. Complex vaulting and window tracery of Lady chapel added to east by Thomas Whitney, beginning in 1315, to accomodate increasing importance of worship of Mary. Polygonal chapter house, finished by 1319, to house the meetings of the monks whose monasteries were an important component of most British cathedrals. Perpendicular Gothic style, which stressed breadth often of a single spatial volume and intricate vaulting: Choir, Gloucester Cathedral, 1332-57, and fan vaulting of south cloister, c 1370-77.
III. Venice, Italy, as an atypical pre1400 environment, one in which foreign cultures, in this case Byzantine and Arabic, exert a more obvious influence, here upon an unusually large and rich European city, in which religious architecture is less dominant than in most cities at which we have looked in this course. Relative simplicty of hall church of Saints Giovanni and Paolo, begun 1333, built as a showcase for the preaching of the Dominican order, and, for a Venetian building, unusually typical of the rest of Italy. Role of the mendicant orders in introducing an unusually austere Gothic to Italy. Versus the ornate overlay of a purely ornamental upon an established local building type, the palaces of the city's merchants, especially the larger ones lining the Grand Canal. Constructional polychromy and Islamic-influenced second-story arcade of Doge's Palace, begun c 1340, to house the government headed by an elected duke. Lack of relationship of this gothic to either structure or form. Prominence of palace from the water and the Piazetta in comparison to older adjacent church.
Cathedral, Wells ( Image1 or Image2) (England), begun c 1200 in the gothic style. Broad, two-towered west front by Adam Lock and Thomas Norreys, and three-storeyed interior nave elevation with quadripartite rib vaulting.
Kingšs College Chapel, Cambridge (England), 1448-1515, built by Reginald Ely, John Wolryche, Simon Clerk, and John Wastrell, in the
Central European hall churches in which aisles are as tall as nave as seen in choir of St. Lawrence, Nurnberg (Germany), 1439-77 by Konrad Heinzelmann and Konrad Roritzer. Elaborate vaulting.
II. Gothic secular architecture: the emergence of new building types. Use of Gothic as ornament, to some degree independently of construction.
Town Halls: Palazzo Publico on Piazza del Campo, in Siena (Italy), 1289-1348. Machicolations and tower as emblems of power, Gothic window tracery. Ornamental richness of Town Hall, Bruges (Belguim), 1376-1421.
Beyond the monastery: the hospital and the university.
Hotel-Dieu, Beaune (France), begun 1443. Founded by Nicholas Rollin. Hospital patients housed often several to a bed; importance of religious faith over hope of a medical cure.
Courtyard-centered English collegiate architecture: Magdalen College, Oxford, founded 1458 by William of Waynflete, built 1473-1509 by William Orchard and William Reynold. Great hall-like dining hall. Library of Duke Humphrey, built 1483-90 above the Divinity School.
III. Domestic architecture:
Timber framed houses, 14th-17th centuries, like those in Lavenham, England, still the standard substantial dwelling. Shops at street level. Early urban palace for a man born into the middle class, courtyard-oriented House of Jacques Coeur, Bourges (France), 1443-51.
Casto Edward Vocal Jr.
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