Such a transcendent experience of architecture is reinforced by the rich stained-glass windows, sometimes spanning the entire height of the edifice. The typical elevation of a Gothic cathedral interior, with storey upon corresponding storey, draws the gaze to the highest point in the vault, in an irresistible upward pull symbolic of the Christian hope of leaving the terrestrial world for a heavenly realm. Its choir and transept were rebuilt soon afterwards to the original 48 meters, now supported by twice as many flying buttresses. The dramatic collapse in 1284 of the tallest among them, Beauvais, marked the vertical limits of Gothic architecture. The vault of each new cathedral strained to surpass that of its predecessors by a few meters. With growing assurance, architects in northern France, and soon all over Europe, competed in a race to conquer height. The resulting effect is one of clear spatial distribution and organic lightness: the bays are opened on all sides and the walls of the radiating chapels, no longer load-bearing, have large openings filled with stained glass. Two concentric aisles are separated by slender columns: the outer aisle is covered by five-part and the inner aisle by four-part rib vaults. The new architectural grammar was first coherently articulated in the ambulatory ( chevet) of the royal abbey church of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, built under Abbot Suger between 11. These external structures absorb the outward thrust of the vault at set intervals just under the roof, making it possible to reduce the building’s exterior masonry shell to a mere skeletal framework. Equally important, flying buttresses began to appear in the 1170s, whose vertical members (uprights) are connected to the exterior wall of the building with bridge-like arches (flyers). They also developed a system of stone ribs to distribute the weight of the vault onto columns and piers all the way to the ground the vault could now be made of lighter, thinner stone and the walls opened to accommodate ever-larger windows. For example, they adopted the pointed arch, which has a lesser lateral thrust than the round arch and is easily adaptable to openings of various widths and heights. From 1100 onward, architects experimented with innovations that, once properly combined, allowed the dissolution of the wall and a fluid arrangement of space. Their walls are necessarily thick to counter the outward thrust of the vault, and they allow only small windows. Gothic architecture is the result of an engineering challenge: how to span in stone ever-wider surfaces from ever-greater heights? While most early medieval churches were covered with timber ceilings, many Romanesque buildings have either stone barrel vaults (i.e., semi-circular) or groin vaults (i.e., bays of barrel vaults crossing at a right angle). Long since rid of derogatory connotations, the label is now used to characterize an art form based on the pointed arch, which emerged around Paris in the middle of the twelfth century, was practiced throughout Europe, and lingered in some regions well into the sixteenth century. Vasari implied that this architecture was debased, especially compared to that of his own time, which had revived the forms of classical antiquity. “Then arose new architects who after the manner of their barbarous nations erected buildings in that style which we call Gothic ( dei Gotthi).” Florentine historiographer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was the first to label the architecture of preceding centuries “Gothic,” in reference to the Nordic tribes that overran the Roman empire in the sixth century.
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