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 verticalitysteeply 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

triforiumclerestorey

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

triforiumclerestorey

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

ParisSolomon

worships false idol of his wives

IV. D. 4.