Encyclopedia
The
Gothic Revival was an architectural movement which originated in mid-18th century
England. In the nineteenth century, increasingly serious and learned neo-Gothic styles sought to revive
medieval forms, in distinction to the
classical styles which were prevalent at the time. The Gothic Revival was paralleled and supported by medievalism, which had its roots in antiquarian concerns with survivals and curiosities. The movement had significant influence throughout the
United Kingdom as well as in
Europe and
North America, and perhaps more
Gothic architecture was built in nineteenth and twentieth centuries than had originally ever been built.
In English literature, the architectural Gothic Revival and classical
Romanticism gave rise to the
Gothic novel genre, beginning with
Castle of Otranto by
Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, and inspired a 19th century genre of medieval poetry which stems from the pseudo-bardic poetry of "
Ossian." Poems like "Idylls of the King" by
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson recast specifically modern themes in medieval settings of Arthurian romance. In German literature, the Gothic Revival also had a grounding in literary fashions.
History
Survival and revival
Gothic architecture did not die out completely in the 15th century, but instead lingered on in on-going cathedral-building projects and the construction of churches in increasingly isolated rural districts of England, France, Spain and Germany. In
Bologna, in 1646, the Baroque architect Carlo Rainaldi constructed Gothic vaults for the Basilica of San Petronio which had been under construction since 1390; there, the Gothic context of the structure overrode considerations of the current architectural mode. Similarly, Gothic architecture survived in an urban setting during the later 17th century, as shown in
Oxford and
Cambridge, where some additions and repairs to Gothic buildings were apparently considered to be more in keeping with the style of the original structures than contemporary
Baroque. Sir
Christopher Wren's Tom Tower for
Christ Church College, Oxford University, and, later, Nicholas Hawksmoor's west towers of
Westminster Abbey, blur the boundaries between what is called "Gothic survival" and the Gothic revival.
In the mid 18th century, with the rise of
Romanticism, an
increased interest and awareness of the Middle Ages among some influential connoisseurs created a more appreciative approach to selected medieval arts, beginning with church architecture, the tomb monuments of royal and noble personages, stained glass, and late Gothic illuminated manuscripts. Other Gothic arts continued to be disregarded as barbaric and crude, however: tapestries and metalwork, as examples. Sentimental and nationalist associations with historical figures were as strong in this early revival, as purely aesthetic concerns. A few Britons, and soon some Germans, began to appreciate the picturesque character of ruins — "picturesque" becoming a new aesthetic quality — and those mellowing effects of time that the Japanese call
wabi-sabi represents a comprehensive Japan [i]ese world view or aesthetic [i] centred on the accepta ...
and which
Horace Walpole independently admired, mildly tongue-in-cheek, as "the true rust of the Barons' wars." The "Gothick" details of Walpole's Twickenham villa, "Strawberry Hill," appealed to the
rococo tastes of the time, and by the 1770s, thoroughly
neoclassical architects such as
Robert Adam and
James Wyatt were prepared to provide Gothic details in drawing-rooms, libraries, and chapels, for a romantic vision of a Gothic abbey,
Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire.
Inveraray Castle, constructed from 1746 with design input from William Adam, displays early revival of Gothic features in
Scotland. The "Gothick" style was an architectural manifestation of the artificial "picturesque" seen elsewhere in the arts: these ornamental temples and
summer-houses ignored the structural logic of true Gothic buildings and were effectively Palladian buildings with pointed arches. The eccentric landscape designer
Batty Langley even attempted to "improve" Gothic forms by giving them classical proportions.
A younger generation who took Gothic architecture more seriously provided the readership for J. Britten's series of
Cathedral Antiquities, which began appearing in 1814. In 1817, Thomas Rickman wrote an
Attempt… to name and define the sequence of Gothic styles in English ecclesiastical architecture, "a text-book for the architectural student". Its long title is descriptive:
Attempt to discriminate the styles of English architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation; preceded by a sketch of the Grecian and Roman orders, with notices of nearly five hundred English buildings. The categories he used were
Norman,
Early English,
Decorated and
Perpendicular. It went through numerous editions and was still being republished in 1881.
Romanticism and nationalism
French neo-Gothic had its roots in a minor aspect of
Anglomanie, starting in the late 1780s. In 1816, when French scholar Alexandre de Laborde said "Gothic architecture has beauties of its own," the idea was novel to most French readers. Starting in 1828, Alexandre Brogniart, the director of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory, produced fired enamel paintings on large panes of plate glass, for
Louis-Philippe's royal chapel at
Dreux. It would be hard to find a large, significant commission in Gothic taste that preceded this one, save for some Gothic features in a handful of
jardins à l'anglaise.The French Gothic revival was set on sounder intellectual footings by a pioneer, Arcisse de Caumont, who founded the
Societé des Antiquaires de Normandy at a time when
antiquaire still meant a connoisseur of antiquities, and who published his great work on Norman architecture in 1830 . The following year
Victor Hugo's
Nôtre Dame de Paris, or
Notre-Dame of Paris is a novel [i] first published in 1831 [i] ...
appeared, in which the great Gothic cathedral of Paris was at once a setting and a protagonist in a hugely popular work of fiction. Hugo intended his book to awaken a concern for the surviving Gothic architecture, however, rather than to initiate a craze for neo-Gothic in contemporary life. In the same year that
Nôtre-Dame de Paris appeared, the new French monarchy established a post of Inspector-General of Ancient Monuments, a post filled in 1833 by
Prosper Merimée, who became the secretary of a new
Commission des Monuments Historiques in 1837. This was the Commission that instructed
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to report on the condition of the abbey of Vézelay in 1840. When France’s first prominent neo-Gothic church was built, the Basilica of Sainte-Clothilde, Paris, begun in September 1846 and consecrated 30 November 1857, the architect chosen was, significantly, of German extraction, François-Christian Gau ; the design wassignificantly modified by Gau's assistant, Théodore Ballu, in the later stages, to produce the pair of
flêches that crown the west end.
Meanwhile, in Germany, interest in the
Cologne Cathedral, which had begun construction in 1248 and was still unfinished at the time of the revival, began to reappear. The 1820s Romantic movement brought back interest, and work began once more in 1824, significantly marking a German return of Gothic architecture.
Because of
Romantic nationalism in the early 19th century, the Germans, French and English all claimed the original Gothic architecture of the 12th century as originating in their own country. The English boldly coined the term "Early English" for Gothic, a term that implied Gothic architecture was an English creation. In his 1832 edition of
Notre Dame de Paris Victor Hugo said "Let us inspire in the nation, if it is possible, love for the national architecture", implying that Gothic was France's national heritage. In Germany with the completion of Cologne Cathedral in the 1880s, at the time the world's tallest building, the cathedral was seen as the height of Gothic architecture.
In Florence, the Duomo's temporary façade erected for the Medici-House of Lorraine nuptials in 1588–1589, was dismantled, and the west end of the cathedral stood bare again until 1864, when a competition was held to design a new facade suitable to
Arnolfo di Cambio's structure and the fine
campanile next to it. This competition was won by Emilio De Fabris, and work on his polychrome design and panels of
mosaic was begun in 1876 and completed in 1887.
Pugin, Ruskin and the Gothic as a moral force
In the late 1820s, A.W.N. Pugin, still a teenager, was working for two highly visible employers, providing Gothic detailing for luxury goods. For the Royal furniture makers Morel and Seddon he provided designs for redecorations for the elderly
George IV at
Windsor Castle in a Gothic taste suited to the setting. For the royal silversmiths Rundell Bridge and Co., Pugin provided designs for silver from 1828, using the 14th-century Anglo-French Gothic vocabulary that he would continue to favour later in designs for the new Palace of Westminster .
In
Contrasts , Pugin expressed his admiration not only for mediæval art but the whole mediæval ethos, claiming that Gothic architecture was the product of a purer society. In
The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture , he suggested that modern craftsmen seeking to emulate the style of medieval workmanship should also reproduce its methods. Pugin believed Gothic was true Christian architecture, boldly saying "The pointed arch was produced by the Catholic faith". Pugin's most famous building is
The Houses of Parliament in
London, which he designed in two campaigns, 1836–1837 and again in 1844 and 1852, with the classicist
Charles Barry as his co-architect. Pugin provided the external decoration and the interiors, while Barry designed the symmetrical layout of the building, causing Pugin to remark, "All Grecian, Sir; Tudor details on a classic body".
John Ruskin supplemented Pugin's ideas in his two hugely influential theoretical works,
The Seven Lamps of Architecture and
The Stones of Venice . Finding his architectural ideal in
Venice, Ruskin proposed that Gothic buildings excelled above all other architecture because of the "sacrifice" of the stone-carvers in intricately decorating every stone. By declaring the
Doge's Palace to be "the central building of the world", Ruskin argued the case for Gothic government buildings as Pugin had done for churches, though only in theory. When his ideas were put into practice, Ruskin despised the spate of public buildings built with references to the Ducal Palace, including the
University Museum in Oxford.
Ecclesiology
In England, the
Church of England was undergoing a revival of Anglo-Catholic and
ritualist ideology in the form of the
Oxford Movement and it became desirable to build large numbers of new churches to cater for the growing population. This found ready exponents in the universities, where the ecclesiological movement was forming. Its proponents believed that Gothic was the
only style appropriate for a parish church, and favoured a particular era of Gothic architecture — the "
decorated".
The Ecclesiologist, the publication of the Cambridge Camden Society, was so savagely critical of new church buildings that were below its exacting standards that a style called the 'archaeological Gothic' emerged, producing some of the most convincingly mediæval buildings of the Gothic revival. However, not every architect or client was swept away by this tide. Although Gothic Revival succeeded in becoming an increasingly familiar style of architecture, the attempt to associate it with superiority of the high church, as advocated by Pugin and the ecclesiological movement, was anathema to those with ecumenical or nonconformist principles. They looked to adopt it solely for its aesthetic romantic qualities, to combine it with other styles or look to northern Europe for Gothic of a more plain appearance, and to consciously choose a quite different style; or in some instances all three of these as at the ecumenical
Abney Park Cemetery for whom the architect
William Hosking FSA was engaged.
Viollet-le-Duc and Iron Gothic
If France had not been quite as early on the neo-Gothic scene, she produced a giant of the revival in
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. As well as being a powerful and influential theorist, Viollet-le-Duc was a leading architect whose genius lay in restoration. He believed in restoring buildings to a state of completion that they would not have known even when they were first built, theories he applied to his restorations of the walled city of
Carcassonne and Notre-Dame and
Sainte Chapelle in
Paris. In this respect he differed from his English counterpart Ruskin as he often replaced the work of mediaeval stonemasons. His rational approach to Gothic was in stark contrast to the revival’s romanticist origins, and considered by some to be a prelude to the structural honesty demanded by Modernism.
Throughout his career he remained in a quandary as to whether iron and masonry should be combined in a building. Iron had in fact been used in Gothic buildings since the earliest days of the revival. It was only with Ruskin and the archaeological Gothic's demand for structural truth that iron, whether it was visible or not, was deemed improper for a Gothic building. This argument began to collapse in the mid-19th century as great prefabricated structures such as the glass and iron
Crystal Palace and the glazed courtyard of the Oxford University Museum were erected, which appeared to embody Gothic principles through iron. Between 1863 and 1872 Viollet-le-Duc published his
Entretiens sur l’architecture, a set of daring designs for buildings that combined iron and masonry. Though these projects were never realised, they influenced several generations of designers and architects, notably
Antonio Gaudi.
By 1872 the Gothic Revival was mature enough in the United Kingdom that Charles Locke Eastlake, an influential professor of design, could produce
A History of the Gothic Revival, but the first extended essay on the movement that was written within the maturing field of art history was
Kenneth Clark,
The Gothic Revival. An Essay, which appeared in 1928.
Gothic Revival in the decorative arts
The revived Gothic style was not limited to architecture. Whimsical Gothick detailing in English furniture is traceable as far back at Lady Pomfret's house in Arlington Street, London , and gothic fretwork in chairbacks and glazing patterns of bookcases is a familiar feature of
Chippendale's
Director , where, for example the three-part bookcase employs gothick details with Rococo profusion, on a symmetrical form. Sir Walter Scott's Abbotsford exemplifies in its furnishings the "Regency gothic". By the mid-nineteenth century Gothic traceries and niches could be inexpensively recreated in
wallpaper, and gothic blind arcading could decorate a ceramic pitcher. The illustrated catalogue for the
Great Exhibition of 1851 is replete with gothic detail, from lacemaking and carpet designs to heavy machinery.
The 20th century and beyond
At the turn of the
20th Century, technological developments such as the light bulb, the elevator, and steel framing caused many to see architecture that used load-bearing masonry as obsolete. Steel framing supplanted the non-ornamental functions of
rib vaults and
flying buttresses. Some architects used Neo-Gothic tracery as applied ornament to an iron skeleton underneath, for example in
Cass Gilbert's 1907
Woolworth Building skyscraper in
New York and
Raymond Hood's 1922
Tribune Tower in Chicago. But over the first half of the century, Neo-Gothic became supplanted by
Modernism. Some in the
Modern Movement saw the Gothic tradition of architectural form entirely in terms of the "honest expression" of the technology of the day, and saw themselves as the rightful heir to this tradition, with their rectangular frames and exposed iron girders.
In spite of this, the Gothic revival continued to exert its influence, simply because many of its more massive projects were still being built well into the second half of the 20th century, such as
Giles Gilbert Scott's Liverpool Cathedral. In the USA,
James Gamble Rodgers' reconstruction of the campus of
Yale University and Charles Donagh Maginnis's early buildings at
Boston College helped establish the prevalence of Collegiate Gothic architecture on American university campuses. The Gothic revival skyscraper on the
University of Pittsburgh's campus, the
Cathedral of Learning, for example, used very Gothic stylings both inside and out, while using modern technologies to make the building taller.
Ralph Adams Cram became a leading force in American Gothic, with his most ambitious project the
Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York , as well as Collegiate Gothic buildings at
Princeton University. Cram said "the style hewn out and perfected by our ancestors [has] become ours by uncontested inheritance." In addition to
Princeton University,
Lehigh University and
Boston College, some of the buildings on
West Chester University's campus are also built in the Collegiate Gothic style. Indeed, Atlanta's historic
Oglethorpe University continues to build in the Collegiate Gothic style to this day, with its four newest residence halls mimicking the school's "Silent Faculty" of academic buildings.
Though the number of new Gothic revival buildings declined sharply after the 1930s, they continue to be built. The cathedral of
Bury St. Edmunds was constructed between the late 1950s and 2005 . In 2002, Demetri Porphyrios was commissioned to design a neo-Gothic residential college at
Princeton University to be known as Whitman College. Porphyrios has won several commissions after votes by student bodies , not university design committees, confirming what modernist architects have suspected: that neo-gothic architecture may be more popular among the public, in spite of resistance to gothic as a "style" among the architectural establishment, and cost restraints.
Notes
Gothic revival architects
...
External links
Further reading
- Clark, Sir KennethThe Gothic Revival: An Essay in the History of Taste, 1928. ISBN 0-7195-0233-0
- Hunter-Stiebel, Penelope, Of knights and spires: Gothic revival in France and Germany, , 1989 ISBN 0-916849-05-9
- Summerson, Sir John, 1948. "Viollet-le-Duc and the rational point of view" collected in Heavenly Mansions and other essays on Architecture.
- “Le Gothique retrouvé“ avant Viollet-le-Duc. Exhibition, 1979. The first French exhibition concerned with French ne-Gothic.
- Christian Amalvi, Le Goût du moyen âge, , 1996. The first French monograph on French Gothic Revival.
- Megan Aldrich, Gothic Revival. 1994. The most recent summing-up.
See also
