Styles and Movements
Gothic Architecture
Medieval
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The cathedral architecture of medieval Europe, born in the Ile-de-France in the mid twelfth century, which combined the pointed arch, the rib vault and the flying buttress into a skeletal stone system that carried its loads on points rather than walls. The walls, freed of structural work, dissolved into stained glass, and churches rose to heights no earlier builders had reached; Notre-Dame de Paris and Chartres are among its defining works.
Facts
Disputed
PeriodThe Renaissance supplanted Gothic in Italy by the mid fifteenth century, while Gothic forms continued in England and Belgium into the sixteenth century and later; 1500 is an approximate midpoint, not a single agreed end date. PeriodCirca; the rebuilding of the choir of the abbey church of Saint-Denis near Paris, begun under Abbot Suger around 1140, is the conventional starting point of the Gothic system. Origin Region Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Influenced
Influenced By
Gothic grew directly out of Romanesque building, replacing its round arches and mass with point loads and glass.
Notable Examples
The body of the cathedral, begun 1296, is Italian Gothic; the dome that crowns it opened the Renaissance.
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