18. The Evangelists,
detail of the “Pillar of the Angel”,
Notre-Dame Cathedral, Strasbourg (France),
c. 1225-1230. In situ.

 

 

Gothic Architectural Monuments

During the crusades, traffic among occidental peoples grew and facilitated an easier, faster spread of artistic forms. For the most part the Gothic style owes its spread to this global traffic and its constructive advantages. French building masters first carried seeds to England and into the west of Germany. The seedlings were then transplanted from Germany to the north, east and south of Europe. The pupils often surpassed their masters, but the cradle of the Gothic is unequivocally in France.

 

 

The Gothic in France

 

The Basilica of St. Denis

The innovations at the heart of the French Gothic style, reach back to the eleventh century; but only in the basilica’s choir, built near Paris by statesman and abbot Suger around 1130-1140, did the Gothic appear as a unified system (see p. 18, 19). The basilica already contains all elements of the Gothic style: pointed arches, pillars and ribbed vaulting. The church of Saint-Denis is considered to be the “founding construction of the Gothic”. The façade with its double towers, which were erected between 1137 and 1340; the vertical sectioning into three parts with protruding buttresses; the small rose window; and the spires, which were erected after 1144, all carry clear Gothic features. The absence of partitioning walls b1etween the choir chapels offered a new, harmonious, spatial feel – a characteristic that would point to the vastness of later cathedrals. The rose window in the Basilica of St. Denis is the first of its kind. The upper part of the choir and the nave were built from 1231 to 1281.

 

While the Basilica of St. Denis and a few of its contemporary edifices represent the preparatory stage, the new building method reached a decisive breakthrough in Notre-Dame in Paris (see p. 20, 21, 22, 23) and Laon Cathedral.