The History of Art Survey

Lecture 28

Gothic Art Outside France

Gardner 518 - 531

Gothic Art Outside France: -

18-

39 Salisbury Cathedral, 1220-58, Salisbury

40 Plan, Salisbury Cathedral Salisbury

41 Nave, Salisbury Cathedral Salisbury

42 Choir of Gloucester Cathedral, 1332-57, Gloucester

43 Chap[el of Henry VII, 1502-19, Westminster Abbey London

44 Tomb of Edward II Gloucester

45 Richard de Bello(?), Mappamundi of Henry III, c. 1277-1289, 5π2≤ Herford

46 Gerhard of Cologne, Cologne Cathedral, 1248-[1880] Cologne

47 Gerhard of Cologne, Choir of Cologne Cathedral, 1322 Cologne

48 St Elizabeth, 1235-1283 Marburg

49 Interior, St Elizabeth Marburg

50 Death of the Virgin, tymp. , So. transept, Strasbourg Cath, 1230, Strasbourg

51 Ekkehard and Uta, Naumburg Cathedral, 1249-55, 6π 2≤, Naumburg

52 Bamberg Rider, Bamberg Cathedral, 1235-40, 7π9≤, Bamberg

53 Rˆttgen Pieta (Virgin with the Dead Christ), 1300-1325, 3π Rhineland

54 Nicholas of Verdun, Klosterneuburg Altar, 1181, 3π6π h Klosterneuburg

55 Nicholas of Verdun, Shrine of the three Kings, c 1190 Cologne

56 Lorenzo Maitani, West facade, Orvieto Cathedral, 1310- Orvieto

57 Dogeπs Palace, 1340-45, and 1424-38 Venice

58 Milan Cathedral, , 1386- Milan

Gothic Outside of France

≥In 1269, the prior (deputy abbot) of the church of Saint Peter at Wimpfen-im-Tal in the German Rhineland hired åa very experienced architect who had recently come from the city of Parisπ to rebuild his monastery church.4 The architect reconstructed the church opere francigeno (in the French manner) ãthat is, in the Gothic style of the Œle-de-France. The spread of the Parisian Gothic style had begun even earlier, but in the second half of the thirteenth century the new style became dominant throughout western Europe. European architecture did not, however, turn Gothic all at once nor in a uniform way. Almost everywhere, patrons and builders modified the ≥court style≤ of the Œle-de-France according to local preferences. Because the old Romanesque traditions lingered on in many places, each area, marrying its local Romanesque design to the new style, developed its own brand of Gothic architecture≤ (518-9)

This should be quite interesting to rethink. Why should a style spread? Who carried it? How does the old style adapt the new, or, adapt to the new? I have already done some of that in my own India chapter with the coming of West Asian to South Asia.

39 Salisbury Cathedral, 1220-58, Salisbury

40 Plan, Salisbury Cathedral Salisbury

41 Nave, Salisbury Cathedral Salisbury

42 Choir of Gloucester Cathedral, 1332-57, Gloucester

A look into the interior choir vaulting of Gloucester Cathedral can give us an idea of how this development proceeded.

The English Gothic is called there the Decorated style. Based on the French systemπs Scholastic enjoyment of column moldings creating a linear logic in ribs of the vaults above the English masons multiplied their ribs in myriad and elaborate ways. The mid 14th century elaboration of this style seen here is called the Perpendicular style. The east end of the choir here is dissolved entirely into one vast window. Characteristic of the English version, this choir ends in a flat wall, not the curving choir of the French.

What was in France a vaulting of logic has become her one of decoration. The actual vault here is a somewhat peaked ≥Romanesque≤ barrel; the ribs we see are merely decorative overlay.

In fact all of the structural elements in the French Gothic are decorative in intention, a logic developed for decorative effect.

43 Chapel of Henry VII, 1502-19, Westminster Abbey London

Here we see the even more elaborated ≥Fan Vaults≤ in which the elaboration of decorative fantasy totally transforms the original structural logic into an anti-structural decoration.

44 Tomb of Edward II, 1327+ Gloucester

Here is a Gothic decorative fantasy built around the supine image of deceased king. The deceased is represented in regal robes with his crown. ≥idealized and Christlike≤ our book says. An angel is placed to each side, a guardian lion at his feet. The figure is entirely surrounded by an elaborate Perpendicular Gothic canopy. It is a ≥kind of miniature chapel...gables, buttresses, and pinnacles.≤ with ≥ogee arches (arches made up of two double-curved lines meeting at a point), a characteristic Late Gothic form.≤ (521-2) It is a giant reliquary.

The interior of Saint-Denis, as the church of the French royal family, is filled with such memorials. Though there is it mostly figures lying in state, without the surrounding architectural frame. In that case it is the entire church that is the reliquary.

45 Richard de Bello(?), Mappamundi of Henry III, c. 1277-1289, 5π2≤ Herford

46 Gerhard of Cologne, Cologne Cathedral, 1248-[1880] Cologne

47 Gerhard of Cologne, Choir of Cologne Cathedral, 1322 Cologne

48 St Elizabeth, 1235-1283 Marburg

49 Interior, St Elizabeth Marburg

50 Death of the Virgin, tympanum, South transept, Strasbourg Cathedgal, 1230, Strasbourg

Strasbourg cathedral was begun in 1176 under the successors of the Carolingian and Ottonian emperors ruling in the Rhine river valley. As an example of how much more fluid borders and the cultures they refer to are, it is now a French city. Here is the tympanum of the left doorway of the cathedralπs south transept.

It is the same moment as the Visitation at Reims, and of a comparable level of interaction among the figures within a scene. Because Reims is in the center of activity our authors say that the work reveals ≥the impact of contemporary French sculpture, especially that of Reims....A comparison of the Strasbourg Mary on her death bed with the Mary of the Reims Visitation group (18-24) suggests that the German master had studied the recently installed French jamb statues.≤ (524).

At this distance in space and time it might be just as accurate to say that the work was up to date. If a weekπs travel separated the two places there is no reason to suppose that that would hinder artists intent upon getting work by being up on the most prestigeous developments would not be in touch with the same stylistic currents as those at Reims. The hegemonic history not only writes from famous spot to famous spot, it reads history as if it ran from famous spot to famous spot. The logic of our text is that the provincials of Strasbourg were following the artists at Reims, who were closer to the Œle-de-France. But the actual situation in the real world is that artists at Strasbourg were networked into the same set of precedents as those at Reims. And so they were reaching the same development at the same moment. Specialists in the period, who know the dozens of tympanum going up in the 1220s and the hundreds of other important sculpture projects going on, as well as the most successful works of the previous decades, donπt cite Reims as a source for Strasbourg, but the work of the previous decades. Some of which is east, not west, of Strasbourg.

The point of this survey myopia is the hegemonic ideal aristocratic creativity. It is the ideological belief that what is important comes from the people who are most powerful or most famous. But the truth of history is less often that the one famous person is responding to another, than that both have been participating in a much wider discourse including, not everyone, but a quite expansive selection of prominent artists and patrons, who themselves are responding to other circles. and that the circles that influence tympanum sculptors include not just artists and patrons but theologians and parishioners.

The Death of the Virgin tympanum at Strasbourg shows the twelve Apostles gathered in a semi-circle around the barely departed Virgin. Christ stands at the center receiving a tiny ≥doll-like≤ representation of her soul. Mary Magdalene wrings her hands in grief below. The gestures of grieving are melodramatically stressed. The draperies ripple intensely. There is a clear attempt to stir emotional response in the viewers. The figures are strongly humanized. ≥In Gothic Germany artists carried this humanizing trend even further by emphasizing passionate drama. Heightened emotionalism (or expressionism) proved an important ingredient of German art in succeeding centuries and even in the modern era.≤ (525)

We can see this expressionism in the gestures clearly enough. We can also note that they havenπt gotten the idea of how put it into the faces yet, or at least they havenπt decided to put it into the faces. Indeed different workshop artists may be doing the figures and the faces. The most striking aspect of the tympanum after its full effect is the repetitive similarity of all the male faces! These faces are at once strikingly naturalistic ãsay you compare them to the more wooden symbols of Chartresπs west transept figures (18-17)ã and strikingly repeated thirteen times in the same tympanum.

It is thus a second striking detail that the two womenπs faces here are quite different. And, as our text points out, ≥A comparison of the Strasbourg Mary on her death bed with the Mary of the Reims Visitation group (18-24) suggests that the German master had studied the recently installed French jamb statues.≤ These two faces are distinctly alike. Do they come from the same hand? That is, could an artist from Reims have been brought here to do this face? Could it be just as our text supposes, that the Strasbourg sculptor is directly imitating the Reims work? Could both be taking their lead as the text supposed earlier, on page 507, when it says, ≥The youthful Mary...resembles the women of the Antonine dynasty, especially Faustina the Younger, Marcus Aureliusπs wife.≤

You see here how the hegemonic ideal works. The authors canπt be sure of where this striking feature comes from, but they want to make sure we expect it to be from a source beyond the work at hand and they want that source to be something famous, and already in the survey. Even two different hypothetical famous sources are acceptable. My preference is to suppose a wide circle of available models mixed significantly with the creativity of this workshop in this particular site. You saw how I worked with the various sources, drawn upon so richly with in the local Mughal cultural creativity, in my discussion of the Taj Mahal.

51 Ekkehard and Uta, Naumburg Cathedral, 1249-55, 6π 2≤, Naumburg

52 Bamberg Rider, Bamberg Cathedral, 1235-40, 7π9≤, Bamberg

53 Rˆttgen Piet‡ (Virgin with the Dead Christ), 1300-1325, 3π, Rhineland

The Rˆttgen Piet‡ is another example of the expressionism that is a highly developed characteristic of German art. This is indeed one of the most famous examples of it, as it is representative of a number of related works. The Piet‡ (Italian for pity or compassion) is the image Mary with her dead son in her lap. It is a major Catholic iconic imagery. Our text uses this image to remind us of ≥The widespread troubles of the fourteenth-centuryãwar, plague, famine, and socialãbrought on an ever more acute awareness of suffering. This found its way readily into religious art.≤ (526)

The point here isnπt that people hadnπt noticed how difficult life was, but that the elite who patronize the art, and are relatively insulated from the troubles of common people, are on occasion moved to allow some of that travail to show through. German culture has a much greater interest in the more painful aspects of life and a greater interest in portraying it than Italian and French cultures that have by comparison tended to suppress the expression of emotion.

To realize how seldom such pain is allowed to seep into our canon of the great works one need only flip backwards through the book we have been reading. Both Christπs passion and suffering and that of common folk is remarkably absent.

In Germany in the later Middle Ages The Dance of Death, Christ as the Man of Sorrow, and the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary became favorite themes. A fevered and fearful piety sought comfort and reassurance in the reflection that Christ and the Virgin Mother shared humanityπs woes.≤ (526)

The work is in painted wood, and so the result of modest, not elite patronage. We see a painfully contorted and grimacing Christ, still bearing the cross of thrones, spread across the lap of his mother, who is also grimacing in pain. As our volume says, ≥This statue expresses nothing of the serenity of the Romanesque and earlier Gothic depictions of Mary,≤ e.g., 17-30 or 18-5.

Here is an icon of pain. ≥The work calls out to the horrified believer, åWhat is your suffering compared to this?π ≥ So, what does it say to the non-believer, to anyone who is not Christian? Of course, I would say, much the same thing. Here is suffering. Whether it is the suffering of god, or the suffering of mortals, it is suffering anyone can identify with: the suffering of a mother for a child who has been tortured.

It isnπt pretty, but we are a long way now from the view that art should be pretty. Here we can see how even caricature can carry emotions in ways that more abstract symbols cannot.

≥As the figures of the church portals began to åmoveπ on their columns, then within their niches, and then became free-standing, their details became more outwardly related to the human audience as expressions of recognizable human emotions.≤ (527)

54 Nicholas of Verdun, Klosterneuburg Altar, 1181, 3π6π h, Klosterneuburg

55 Nicholas of Verdun, Shrine of the three Kings, c 1190 Cologne

56 Lorenzo Maitani, West facade, Orvieto Cathedral, 1310- Orvieto

As the Romanesque churches of Italy were closer to the Early Christian basilica than their neighbors across the Alps, so their church architecture of the thirteenth and fourteenth century continued in their more familiar styles. Following the new French work wasnπt very attractive to them. So a question might be, can we call the churches of Italyπs 12th through 14th centuries Gothic at all? The west facade of Orvieto Cathedral is a good example. It is the work of a designer we can name, Lorenzo Maitani, an architect from nearby Siena.

As close as it is to the Tuscan Romanesque encrustation facade at San Miniato al Monte in Florence (17-17) it does have elements that take off on contemporary French Gothic as well. Take the gables over each of the three entrance doorways, and the concentric tunneling of the jambs and arches of these doors, or the crockets knobbing the edges of the gables. Now we can notice, above, the rose window, the gallery of sculpture, and the framing gables and pinnacles. The facade is a great altar screen that reprises the French facade in an Italian dialect. The pinnacles reprise the towers on the French facades, while the pictorial mosaics hold to the Italian interest in flat surfaces, color and pictorial display. The encrustation, of course, is a Tuscan specialty.

Inside the church has a timber roof and a two-story elevation.

57 Dogeπs Palace, 1340-45, and 1424-38 Venice

58 Milan Cathedral, , 1386- Milan