12. THE MEDIEVAL SYNTHESIS—AND ITS CRACKS, 1215

Gothic Art

The Annunciation

Figures decorating Gothic churches, such as this one at Reims (in northern France), were carved in the round. Here the angel Gabriel (on the left) turns and smiles joyfully at Mary, who looks down modestly as he announces that she will give birth to Jesus. (Scala / Art Resource, NY.)

Gothic architecture—like philosophy, literature, and music—brought together this world and the next. By the end of the thirteenth century, the Gothic style had spread across most of Europe. Some of its elements began to appear as well in other forms of art, like stained glass. Because pointed arches and flying buttresses allowed the walls of a Gothic church to be pierced with large windows, stained glass became a newly important art form. To make this colored glass, workers added chemicals to sand, heated the mixture until it was liquid, and then blew and flattened it. From these colored glass sheets, artists cut shapes, holding them in place with lead strips. The size of the windows allowed the artists to depict complicated themes ranging from heaven to hell. As the sun shone through the finished windows, they glowed like jewels.

The exteriors of Gothic cathedrals were decorated with figures sculpted in the round. The figures evoked motion—turning, moving, and interacting; at times, they even smiled. Like stained glass, Gothic sculptures evoked complex ideas. For example, the figures on the south portals of the cathedral at Chartres tell the story of the soul’s pilgrimage from the suffering of this world to eternal life: on the left doorway are the martyrs (who died for their beliefs), on the right the confessors (who were tortured), and in the center the Last Judgment (when the good receive eternal life and the bad eternal damnation).

Last Judgment

Stained glass could illustrate complex theological truths. In this thirteenth-century depiction of the Last Judgment from the cathedral at Bourges, in France, two colorful devils force two naked sinners into the toothy mouth of hell. Licks of red flame greet them. While the devils enjoy their task (the green one is smiling), the sinners grimace and seem to cry out in pain. (Saint-Etienne Cathedral, Bourges, France / Bridgeman Images.)

REVIEW QUESTION How did artists, musicians, and scholastics in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries try to link the physical world with the divine?

The allure of Gothic was so great that painters began to use elements of its style. Manuscript illuminations feature the pointed shapes of Gothic cathedral windows and vaults as common background themes. (See the Giotto’s Birth of the Virgin for one example.) The colors of Gothic manuscripts echoed the rich hues of stained glass. Gothic sculpture inspired painters like Giotto (1266–1337), an Italian artist. When he filled the walls of a private chapel at Padua with paintings depicting scenes of Christ’s life, Giotto experimented with the illusion of depth, figures in the round, and emotional expression. By fusing naturalistic forms with religious meaning, Giotto found yet another way to fuse the earthly and divine realms. (See “Seeing History: The Agony and the Ecstasy.”)

Giotto’s Birth of the Virgin

This depiction of the Virgin Mary’s birth pays attention to the homey details of a thirteenth-century Florentine aristocratic household. Those details portray a sequence: the baby is bathed and swaddled by maidservants in the bottom tier, while above she is handed to her mother, St. Anne, who reaches out eagerly for the child. (Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy / Collection Dagli Orti / Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.)