Gothic Architecture (History of World Architecture, ed. Pier Luigi Nervi)

1979 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 303
Author(s):  
Peter J. Ferguson ◽  
L. Grodecki
2007 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 211-246
Author(s):  
Elizabeth McKellar

Charles Quennell embodied many of the possibilities and contradictions of British architecture in the first decades of the twentieth century. He is a little-known figure today, but one who deserves further consideration, not only for his own remarkably interesting and varied career but also because of the light he sheds on some of the less explored aspects of architecture in the 1895–1935 period. Throughout his life he combined a strong interest in history with a search for efficiency and design appropriate for the modern world. Both of these preoccupations were widespread among his generation although, apart from a few notable exceptions, rarely can they be found combined to as great a degree as in Quennell. For example, in 1914 he was a keen exponent of standardization and at work on large romantic houses in Hampstead Garden Suburb. By 1918 he had designed what have been called the first modern houses in the country and had just published the first of the bestselling books in the series co-authored with his wife, A History of Everyday Things in England. In 1930 he was writing a contemporary tract The Good New Days and he built a neo-Palladian villa. He has been little studied to date, the main accounts being Alastair Service’s of his work in Hampstead, a Masters thesis by Nick Collins focused on issues of building conservation, and Graham Thurgood’s article on his 1920s work in Essex.


Art History ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bork ◽  
Marc Schurr

The architectural tradition now known as Gothic flourished across most of Europe throughout the later Middle Ages, producing spectacular structures that dominate their home cities even in the 21st century, such as the cathedrals of Chartres, Lincoln, Strasbourg, Milan, and Segovia. All of these buildings incorporate pointed arches, ribbed vaults, traceried windows, spires, pinnacles, and prominent buttresses, including flying buttresses. The development of these stereotypically Gothic features involved the bold extrapolation of motifs seen in the preceding Romanesque style. Although these period labels were not used in the Middle Ages, the Gothic mode was recognized as innovative when it first emerged in the 12th century, and it continued to be identified with the modern in the four centuries that followed. This mode first arose in northern France, and by the middle of the 13th century, French builders had created cathedrals and churches with daringly skeletal structures whose lightness would not be rivaled until the Industrial Revolution. Meanwhile, the fashion for Gothic forms had begun to spread across Europe so that the interplay between international currents and indigenous influences gave rise to a wide variety of national and regional styles. The Gothic mode achieved its fullest expression in the realm of church design, but even there its application was less than wholly systematic, and many important church buildings thus lack one or more of the features stereotypically associated with the style. Many forms originally developed in the context of church design, conversely, eventually became fashionable in secular construction, despite the different functional requirements of these building types. In the meantime, Gothic builders engaged in fruitful dialogue with makers of manuscripts, goldwork, stained glass, sculpture, and liturgical furniture, fostering the cross-medium exchange of ideas and motifs. The Gothic mode dominated European architectural production until the early 16th century, more than a century after the revival of Antique architectural fashions began in Renaissance Florence. The term “Gothic,” in fact, has its roots in the writings of Italian Renaissance authors who falsely associated this highly sophisticated late medieval tradition with the supposedly barbaric Goths who had sacked Rome a millennium earlier. Although profoundly misleading from a historical perspective, this terminology has endured, in part perhaps because it captures an idea of the Gothic as a foil to the classical tradition. Indeed, while the Gothic mode lost its leading position in the decades after 1500 because of the growing taste for Renaissance classicism, it enjoyed several afterlives in the following centuries, inspiring the designers of structures ranging from scrupulously historicizing neo-Gothic churches and university buildings to soaring skyscrapers. The Gothic tradition thus ranks among the most significant currents in the history of Western architecture. For sake of coherence, the present article considers only the development of the original Gothic tradition in medieval Europe, and for sake of concision it cites only books, with an emphasis on synthetic studies whose own bibliographies can serve as useful pointers to monographic studies and more specialized periodical literature.


2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-497
Author(s):  
Hansjörg Geiges

This article highlights the position of mathematics within general culture at various stages of the development of Western civilization. Special emphasis is given to the role of mathematics in Greek philosophy, the influence of mathematics on Gothic architecture and the place of mathematics in 17th and 18th century society. Literary quotations illustrate the shifts in the view of mathematics in society.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gandalif Kazakova

The monograph is devoted to the literary and scientific heritage of the famous French writer, historian, philosopher, thinker, diplomat and statesman F. R. de Chateaubriand, whose scientific works were practically unknown to the Russian reader for many decades. Being the founder of French romanticism and laying the main elements of this direction of culture, F. R. de Chateaubriand nevertheless causes numerous disputes and questions. The monograph shows the process of formation of the writer's romantic worldview on the example of his early works, which still retain traces of the literature of the XVIII century and already carry new romantic trends of the XIX century. The author also presents the facts of the writer's biography and analyzes a number of his historical works devoted to medieval France. From the Renaissance until the end of the XVIII century, one of the elements of medieval architecture and Christian religion-Gothic architecture — was perceived as something negative, barbaric, rude, completely inconsistent with the aesthetics of the XVI — XVIII centuries. F. R. de Chateaubriand was one of the first researchers who discovered the beauty of Gothic churches and the color of national history to the mass reader at the turn of the XVIII—XIX centuries. The rehabilitation of Gothic architecture was accomplished by F. R. de Chateaubriand in his Treatise "the genius of Christianity". The famous "forest theory" of the origin of Gothic helped to "remove" negative assessments of the middle Ages and influenced the formation and development of romanticism both in France and in other European countries. It was F. R. de Chateaubriand's idea of the relationship between medieval architecture and Christian consciousness that influenced all the subsequent development and formation of the history of medieval art. For a wide range of readers interested in the history of literature.


1991 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Böker

Within the stylistic development of English Gothic architecture of the late thirteenth century, the nave of York Minster stands quite apart for its clear continental orientation. Only the great western window and the high vault-both inserted after the structural completion of the nave-conform to the standards of the Decorated Style that dominated English ecclesiastical buildings around 1300. The architecture of the nave itself has generally been regarded as an offspring of the French Rayonnant Gothic, although no specific building could be positively identified as its source; comparisons have dealt exclusively with individual architectural features instead of the system as a whole. Cologne Cathedral, however, never hitherto considered a possible source of influence for York Minster's nave, resembles the English church more than any French cathedral and accordingly must be taken as its main and perhaps only source of inspiration. This German orientation of York, unusual as it is in the history of English architecture, has its parallel in some rather close historical connections between the English court and the German emperor and, notably, his archchancellors, the archbishops of Cologne.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Giulia Ceriani Sebregondi

The construction of Milan Cathedral from 1386 was one of the most important episodes in the history of Italian and European architecture because of the uniqueness of the building itself — the largest Gothic church ever constructed in Italy — and because of the presence of some of the most authoritative architects of the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries in Europe (Lombard, French, German).The documentation about the discussions on how to build the Duomo in the late Trecento and early Quattrocento, especially on the structural choices to be made and the different Lombard and Northern building-site practices, made famous to English readers in a celebrated article by James Ackerman, is extraordinarily rich and extensive, permitting considerations on the relationship between medieval architectural ideals and an actual project.The paper focuses on the famous discussions of 1400, in part a re-run of those of 1392. It will be argued that famous criticism by the French expert Jean Mignot of Milanese architects involving the terms ars and scientia could have a very different meaning from the one generally accepted in the literature. Consequently, it will result that Mignot wanted to return to the original project proposed by Gabriele Stornaloco, which embodied the desired correspondence between the sacred architecture and the perfect God’s world.All of which, could be of some interest to medievalists in general, and to those concerned with architectural theory and with the relationship between Gothic architecture and literature in particular.


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