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Spread and impact of the Gothic style
A more temperate opinion was not to be expected from Vasari, the
16th-century Florentine patriot. Although we are indebted to his
biographies of famous artists of the Renaissance for their endless
wealth of information, his errors of judgement continue to colour
our thinking even today. In truth, there are such fundamental
differences between Italy and the rest of western Europe that it is
highly questionable whether
Giotto (c. 1270-1337) and his followers
- for Vasari the heralds of a rebirth of art in the spirit of
antiquity — can be subsumed under the overall heading of "Gothic".
Of the thousands of paintings which have survived from this period,
it is clear in all but a handful of cases from which side of the
Alps their artists came. Even the terms used to describe the
different phases within the era are very different, with artistic
developments in Italy still being known by their century — as
Dugento or Due-cento, Trecento and Quattrocento.
Leaving aside the phenomenon of the so-called International Gothic
or International Style of c. 1400, which we shall be discussing
later, the Gothic style never really took root in Italy. A hundred
years later, artistic developments in the North and the South had
diverged even further than before and around 1300. While the High
Renaissance triumphed in the latter in the shape of Raphael
(1483—1520) and Leonardo (1452—1519), the Late Gothic masters of
Nuremberg, Cologne, Bruges, Antwerp, Barcelona, Burgos, Lisbon and
even Paris allowed themselves to be influenced at most only
superficially by the new art. On the Iberian peninsula, still
closely tied to the arabesques and surface ornament of Islamic art, the Gothic style would remain dominant until well into the 16th century,
and from there even gain a foothold in the new colonies. In Spain and Portugal,
as partly also in England and Germany, the Gothic was so strong that it was able
to absorb the forms of the Renaissance without relinquishing its own fundamental
structures. In certain places where the Renaissance had never really taken hold,
it was thus able, after 1600, to pass almost unnoticed into the vocabulary of
the Baroque.
The Gothic thereby remained the prevailing style in very different parts of
Europe for well over 300 years - longer than the Romanesque before it, and
considerably longer than both the Baroque which came after and the second
International Style of the 20th century, the three other artistic trends which
dominated all Europe and, latterly too, those overseas cultures strongly stamped
by the Old World. The power it continued to house was reflected in the Gothic
Revival which arose in England after the decline of the Baroque, and which
spread to Germany and ultimately to the USA and even Australia.
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Characteristics of Gothic painting
What makes up the Gothic style is not quite so easy to grasp in painting as it
is in architecture, where pointed arches, rib vaults and multiple-rib pillars
usually offer rapid points of reference. What distinguishes Gothic painting is
first of all a predominance of line, be it scrolling, undulating or fractured,
and ultimately an ornament tied to the plane. This calligraphic element may be seen as a fundamental constituent of the Gothic
style. It is found in its purest form in the gently undulating hems of robes in
French painting and sculpture towards 1300, and above all in the draperies which
fall in cascades, like thickly waving locks of hair, from the bent arms of
figures viewed side on. The style rapidly spread across a broad geographical
area; it can be seen in Sweden and Norway by the first third
of the 14th century.
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The rich play of draperies reaches its high point in the years
around 1400. Granted a presence virtually of their own by their emphasis and
size, they now frame figures viewed frontally.
Draperies in the preceding Early and High Gothic periods assume — again in
painting as in sculpture — a far greater variety of expressions. Predominant,
however, are thinner, more close-fitting robes with long, parallel folds. Narrow pleats are common. In the final phase of the Gothic style, which
follows a "Baroque" phase of overspilling, rounded folds, one stereotype
replaces another. While robes remain lavishly cut, their folds now assume a
crystalline sharpness. Analogous to the draperies, hairstyles and beards are
characterized by thick, regular curls.
This emphasis upon line in the Gothic figure is paralleled by a symbolic and
ultimately unnatural stylization of the human body itself. The contours of even
the earliest Gothic figures are lent a rhythmic sweep. Particularly
characteristic of this trend are the frequently very high-waisted figures of the
14th century, whose silhouettes often trace a decidedly S-shaped
curve. This love affair with line cannot be entirely divorced from
another constituent of the Gothic ideal, namely the very slender,
oval facial type which remains a constant throughout the entire
period, regardless of all new trends and changing ideals.
Such pointers can only highlight the most obvious features of an
epoch; they cannot do justice to all its individual expressions.
Thus within High Gothic sculpture there exists a small group of
works which come extraordinarily close to the harmonious proportions
of the classical human figure. In the midst of the extremely refined
art of the French court in the years around 1300, there suddenly
appear flat faces of strikingly broad and angular outline, which
subsequently became one of the most distinctive features of
Lotharingian Madonna statues. In painting,
Master Theoderic (doc.
from 1359-c. 1381) set himself apart from the overrefinement and stylization of the
Master Hohenfurt
(active c. 1350) and the Bohemian
Master of the Glatz
Madonna (active c. 1345) of just ten years earlier with the
powerful, heavy heads of his massive, thickset saints. Here, as
never before in Western art, they are people of real flesh and
blood. One of his colleagues, later known as
Master Bertram of
Minden (c. 1340—1414/15), emulated him to some
degree, but overall Theoderic's excursion into powerful
individualization was carried no further.
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Master of the Glatz
Madonna
1343-44
Berlin, Gemaldedalerie
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Master Theodoric
( fl third quarter of the 14th century).
Bohemian painter. The only court painter to Charles IV,
Holy Roman Emperor, whose work can be identified, he is
first documented in 1359, when he already held the
position, with a house in Hradcany, Prague. His origins
and early career are obscure, though he may be the
Master Theodoric who in 1348 was elected Master of the
newly founded Prague Brotherhood of Painters.
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 Master Theodoric
St Jerome 1360-65 National Gallery, Prague
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Master Theodoric
St Gregory
1360-65
National Gallery, Prague |
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Circle of Master Theoderic
Crucifixion
c. 1370
(from the Na Slovanech Emmaus monastery, Prague)
Narodni Galeri, Prague |
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The birth of the new style
Even more problematic than the term "Gothic" itself is the precise
dating of the period to which it was posthumously applied. Its
regional variations, too, demand more specific differentiation. In
contrast to what Vasari would have us believe, the Gothic style had
its origins not in the Germanic north, but in France, where large
numbers of classical buildings were in fact still standing in
Vasari's own day. It was the intensive study of these very remains -
and not some anti-classical reaction - that inspired the development
of Gothic forms of ornament and a new image of man. Thus some of the
most impressive examples of French cathedral sculpture owe their
origins to this appraisal of antiquity — decades before, towards the
end of the 13th century in Rome, the painters
Pietro Cavallini
(c.
1240/50?-after 1330), Jacopo Torriti (active c. 1270-1300) and
Filippo Rusiti (active c. 1297-1317) turned their attention to their
classical heritage and thereby laid the foundations for
Giotto's
revolution.
In St Denis, even before 1150, Abbot Suger (c. 1081—1151) "invented"
the ribbed vault which, with its pointed arches and large windows,
would lay down the ground plan for the ambulatories of Gothic
cathedrals. Elsewhere, however, much remained indebted to the
Romanesque style. Even as High Gothic architecture in the region
around Paris entered its classical phase with the construction of
Chartres at the start of the 13th century, in neighbouring
countries, on the Rhine and in Spain, buildings were still springing
up in the excessively ornamented style of the Late Romanesque. The
new style was not embraced synchronously by all of Europe at once,
but rather was adopted by different disciplines of art at different
points in time. Even amongst the painters of the French court, old
Byzantine traditions persisted into the 13th century. Only towards
the middle of the century does a genuinely Gothic style become
palpable in painting - an entire century later than in architecture.
German and Italian painting, meanwhile, were being swept at the very
same time by a fresh wave of Byzantine influence.
On the other hand, this Late Romanesque phase bore the appearance,
in Germany in particular, of a rearguard action. The more
naturalistic proportions being employed in the portrayal of the
human figure and its draperies by their French neighbours had not
escaped the notice of the German painters. Instead of adopting this
new development directly, however, they took its powerfully animated
robes and stylized them — in a Byzantine manner — with crystalline
folds, arriving at what has been aptly termed the zigzag style. This
style is found in England, too, although the country's close
artistic ties to France also produced more naturalistic forms.
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Torriti Jacopo
( fl c. 1270–1300). Italian painter and mosaicist. Two mosaics in Rome
are signed by him: one, on the apse of S Giovanni in Laterano, that once bore
the date 1291 (or, according to some sources, 1290 or 1292); and another on the
apse and triumphal arch of S Maria Maggiore, now replaced by a 19th-century
restoration but at one time dated 1295 or 1296. Torriti is also known to have
executed a mosaic for Arnolfo di Cambio’s tomb of Pope Boniface VIII
(1296) in Old St Peter’s, Rome. Torriti was active during the same period as
Cimabue and Giotto, Pietro Cavallini and Arnolfo di Cambio, but his fame has
been obscured by theirs, no doubt because of his closer links with Byzantine
art. He was nevertheless one of the most important artists working in Rome
during the papacy of Nicholas IV (1288–92) and was entrusted with some of the
most prestigious commissions of the day.
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Torriti Jacopo
The Creation of Eve
1290s
Fresco
Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi |
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Torriti Jacopo
Creation of the World
1290s
Fresco
Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi |
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Torriti Jacopo
The Construction of the Ark
1290s
Fresco
Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi |
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Torriti Jacopo
The Marriage at Cana
1290s
Fresco
Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi |
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Torriti Jacopo
Christ Crowning the Virgin
1296
Mosaic
Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome
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