Plantagenet Style

The Plantagenet style, also called Angevine Gothic, is an architectural style of western France dating mainly to the second half of the twelfth century and the thirteenth century. It was named by the architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc after the House of Anjou-Plantagenet, and despite the English royal name it developed in western France itself rather than in England, growing out of the territories the Plantagenet rulers controlled on the French mainland. The style is marked by cross-ribbed vaults that are extremely curved and almost dome-like, using eight ribs rather than the more usual four (four diagonal ribs plus four further parietal ribs), which gives the vaults a rounded, domed appearance distinct from the Gothic vaulting used at the same time in the Ile-de-France. Because Angevine vaults were steeper sided than the competing regional styles, they produced less horizontal thrust and so needed less external buttressing, a real structural advantage alongside their sense of transparency and spatial flow.