The Legacy of the High Gothic Achievement: the Rayonnant Mode
I. Perfection of the High Gothic Cathedral in the Rayonnant style
Reims Cathedral, 1211-90 Bourges Cathedral, 1211-90
High Gothic (1195-1230) = period of unresolved experimentation
I.
Amiens Cathedral (Nôtre-Dame), Amiens, France, 1220-1269
Perfection lies in a new visionary period = Rayonnant style (1230-1350)
I. A. Context: French king the pre-eminent ruler in Western Europe in 1200
French King Philip-Augustus (r. 1180-1223) Nôtre-Dame, Paris
façade design 1200-10
I. A. 1. Long reign of Louis IX (1226-1270), St. Louis, makes Paris a cultural capital
The Ste.-Chapelle (Holy Chapel), commissioned by Louis IX for the Royal Palace, Paris
I. A. 2. Start of the new court style, Rayonnant (“radiating”), with the rebuilding of St.-Denis’ upper choir, nave and transept in 1231
Abbey church of St.-Denis, Paris, 1231-50
St.-Denis – upper choir, b. 1231
St.-Denis – north transept, b. 1250
Amiens Cathedral, 1220-1269, first architect Robert de Luzarches
I. B. Formal analysis and modernist structure: In what ways is Amiens Cathedral still like the classic design of Chartres?
an elevational system rather than a true wall
Early Christian Romanesque Gothic
S. Sabina Speyer Cathedral Amiens Cathedral
I. B.
I. B.
Amiens CathedralChartres Cathedral
piers taller & wider apart but similar thickness
I. C. Rayonnant style – qualities of a new visionary aesthetic in an influential new phase of Gothic
Abbey church of St Nicaise, Reims, France, b. 1231
Decorative vocabulary becomes architectural (gables, crockets, small pinnacles)
Mixture of blind and open tracery
Chartres Reims
High Gothic cathedrals: comparative height and design of buttressing
Bourges Amiens
I. C. 1. extreme verticality
steeply proportioned
I. C. 1.
St.-Denis – nave Amiens Cathedral – nave
continuous vault responds
Amiens Cathedral – rose window on south transept
I. C. 2. virtually autonomous arching structures instead of wall
bar tracery = Rayonnant styleplate tracery = pierced stone
Chartres Cathedral
bar tracery – intensely modernist device
I. C. 3. Extreme structural lightness
Amiens Cathedral
screening effects like superimposed tracery
I. C. 3.
Amiens Cathedral
screening effects – clerestory mullions extend into triforium
St.-Denis, Paris, 1231-50
Amiens Cathedral
glazed triforium
I. C. 4. extreme levels of illumination
Lowered roof over the aisle vaults makes a glazed
triforium possible
II. Gothic façade – confronting a new design problem
Gothic
Amiens CathedralSanta Sabina Speyer Cathedral
Early Christian Romanesque
II.
Chartres Cathedral(façade begun as Romanesque)
Amiens Cathedral(Rayonnant Gothic façade)
Amiens Cathedral
II. A. How is a unified Gothic exterior articulated all around the building?
Amiens Cathedral
II. A. 1. How does the facade reconcile twin-towered idea with basilical section of the building?
II. A. 1. Portals: encyclopedic story of the Christian salvation.
Amiens Cathedral
II. A. 1.
Zodiac and Labors of the Months
Amiens Cathedral
II. C. 2.
Ste-Chapelle (palace chapel of French kings), Paris, France,1241-48
IV. Symbolic architecture in the Gothic (medieval modernist) style
about the Ste-Chapelle
IV. A. What are the components of this palatine chapel for the French monarch?
Ste-Chapelle, Upper Chapel IV. A.
Ste-Chapelle, Lower Chapel
IV. B. How does the Ste-Chapelle epitomize the French Gothic Court or Rayonnant style in terms of: 1. interior elevation?
Ste-Chapelle
IV. B. 2. vaulting?
steeply proportionedcontinuous vault responds
IV. B. 3. elevational system and buttressing?
20.5 m.
Ste-Chapelle
IV. B. 3.
St Nicaise, Reims, France, 1231
Decorative vocabulary becomes architectural (gables, crockets, small pinnacles)
IV. B. 4. tracery?
Ste-Chapelle
bar tracery – intensely modernist device
dado zone
clerestorey
Ste-Chapelle
triforium
clerestorey
Chartres Cathedral
IV. C. How did the designers give the king and his entourage the sensation that they hovered in the heavens (clerestory)?
nave arcade
triforium
clerestorey
nave arcade
Chartres Cathedral
IV. C.
Ste.-Chapelle
Holy Sepulchre Temple of Solomon
Jerusalem Paris
Ste-Chapelle
Nôtre-Dame Cathedral
Gauthier Cornut: “There can be no doubt that . . . the true Solomon (i.e., Louis IX), the peacemaker, proceeds to a second incarnation.”
IV. D. Symbolism . . . 1. How did Paris become the “New Jerusalem” and what role did the Ste-Chapelle play?
Passion relics on display
Ste-Chapelle
IV. D. 2. What relics was it built to house?
Pope Innocent IV: “The Lord has crowned you (Louis IX) with His Crown of Thorns.”
Passion relics on display in the shrine
IV. D. 3. What church furnishing did the Ste.-Chapelle aggrandize?
Ste-Chapellea Gothic reliquaryRomanesque reliquary
of Ste.-Foi
36
Christ’s first soldiers represented enamels and stone
Early martyrs in the dado zone
Ste-Chapelle dado zone:
IV. D. 4. How did the materials and ornament make the case for Louis IX as the rightful king of Christendom?
Christ’s first soldiers (Apostles) in stone as transition zone
Ste-Chapelle Apostles as pillars of the church
IV. D. 4.
Translation of the Passion relics into Paris by Louis IX
Ste-Chapelle
Passion relics hover in clerestorey (“from the material to the immaterial”)
IV. D. 4.
Louis IX hovers in clerestorey (“from the material to the immaterial”)
Louis IX brings Passion relics to
Paris
Solomon worships false
idol of his wives
IV. D. 4.