Brabantine Gothic Architecture

Brabantine Gothic is a significant regional variant of Gothic architecture typical of the Low Countries, emerging in the first half of the fourteenth century at St. Rumbold Cathedral in Mechelen. It originated in the Duchy of Brabant and spread through the Burgundian Netherlands, shaping church building across what is now Belgium and the Netherlands for roughly two centuries, into the Renaissance. Its light-colored sandstone or limestone allowed intricate detailing, and its buildings typically show round columns with sculpted cabbage-leaf capitals, ambulatories with radiating chapels, and cruciform plans with three-tier elevations along the nave and side aisles, generally on a more modest scale than French Gothic churches. Builders including Jean d'Oisy, Jacob van Thieden, Matheus de Layens and the Keldermans and De Waghemakere families spread the style regionally, and in the waterlogged ground of Holland and Zeeland local builders adapted it by substituting wooden barrel vaults for stone.