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Gothic Styles (1150 - 1550) and later revivals.

Gothic Styles

Gothic architecture comes between the Romanesque and the Renaissance, or revival of the classic. The general characteristics are the elimination of angularity, the adoption of flowing, flexible lines, tall, slender columns of different sizes and diversely grouped, of pointed arches and generally upward-tending lines. Pilasters are present, though the engaged colonnette is more common. Brackets, usually decorated with tracery, are both detached and engaged, the first often embellished with a figure, sometimes an angel holding a shield with heraldic devices or religious symbols. Chamfering is introduced for angles and mouldings.

Ornamentation is generally applied in successive planes, often varying. It is a complete growth wherein parts are a continuation of others, where ornament, even sculpture, is an outcrop (statues being designed for their particular niches) where colour clothes. It follows that in the best Gothic restrictions are imposed on decoration. Though sculpture and carving are everywhere, and made to embrace almost any kind of decoration, though colour is vivid and widespread, the cutting up of vaults by groins and fan tracery, the breadth and curves of cornices, the narrow, long spandrels, the diversity of intercolumniation make the heroic in sculpture impossible and restrict pictorial painting to narrow limits. Therefore we find lavish banded carving, often in odd-shaped panels, statuary confined to small individual figures, in small groups or in long processions. In painting, the pictures are small, groups not numerous and figures tall and slim with flowing drapery. These restrictions are not quite so noticeable in domestic architecture, where the use of the vault and the column is more restricted and large open mural spaces more abundant.

If every part must be carved, it is also true that it is mostly clothed with colour, generally of the primary and secondary classes, with very little admission of the tertiaries, and these are used with extreme boldness. In a string of mouldings four or five colours may be employed, often in daring contrast, and this holds good as regards carving. All is harmonised by various methods, such as the use of thin lines of gold, yellow, or black, of delicate diapers, and the system of counter-changing; in this, for instance, adjoining large masses of bright blue and vivid red will be harmonised by running one colour into the other by means of a wavy or indented line, or by carrying masses of blue ornament on to the red and red ornament on the blue. In diapers we may have colour on colour, metal on metal, metal on colour, or the order reversed; even different shades of colour one on the other, and the diaper patterns may be infinitely varied.

Heraldry, too, pervades the whole system. There are shields of arms, badges, and isolated charges treated as sculptures, often powdered-over spandrels and vaults, and it is seen even in the symbolism of flowers, animals, inanimate objects, always bringing its own note of glowing patchwork of tinctures.

Early English.-mere are four main divisions of Gothic, each having its peculiarities of structure and ornamentation, but naturally merging into each other. The Early English, or Lancet, extends from about 1200 to 1275. Its characteristics are a base formed of a hollow between two rounds with fillets and marked horizontal spread of the lower part; piers generally formed of several small circular columns grouped round a larger one; also isolated slender columns with circular bases and rounded fillets and bell- shaped capitals with circular abacus; arches of lancet form or equilateral; doorways pointed and deeply recessed, the archivolt formed by a succession of diminishing ellipses, with mouldings, and supported on a series of columns; windows narrow and pointed, used singly or in groups of twos, threes, fives, and sevens, often with small circular, trefoil, or quatrefoil windows between the lancets. This grouping, however, is rare out of England, and in the later stages the usual grouping is two windows, with an open circle or quatrefoil at the head, under one arch. The decoration consists of plain mouldings with bold rounds and deep hollows, the dog-tooth and occasionally the chevron, diapers, cusps, and crockets, but very little foliage and that very stiff and formal. Painting is in primary and secondary colours, flat without shadows, folds in drapery and form being represented by black lines. Carving is bold, stiff, with no undercutting, but piercing shows the commencement of tracery. Sculpture is almost entirely restricted to corbel heads and figures, stiff and often grotesque.

Decorated Style.-The Decorated (about 1275-1375) may be divided into Early and Late, beginning about 1315, the first marked by strength and simplicity, the latter by more flowing lines and lavish ornamentation. The columns are slender, often hexagonal or octagonal and small and clustered with engaged stepped bases, marked by rounded moudlings, the capitals of plain mouldings or well-carved foliage, the groups generally showing a diamond or lozenge form on plan. Arches are mostly equilateral. In vaults the ribs of groins are well marked. Doorways are large and deeply recessed, with archivolts abundantly covered by mouldings and carved ornaments. Windows are divided into lights by moulded mullions, the pointed heads filled with delicate geometric tracery, circles, foils, etc., in the Early period, and flowing wavy lines and reticulated net patterns in the Late; there may be from two to nine lights in one window. Circular windows are also common. Mouldings are wide and complicated, having rolls, flat projections, deep hollows, fillets all of different dimensions, intermingled and decorated with carving and painting. Mouldings and drip~ stones are often corbelled, generally with small heads but also figures. Top mouldings and ribs are also crocketed; finials are florid, and we find tnangular canopies, niches in buttresses. There is much bold carving, the ornaments consisting of ball flowers, foils, diapers, natural flowers and foliage, heads and figures, some of these grotesques, especially in the capitals of columns, where we find foliage issuing from the mouth, chin, and hair. Heraldry played an increasing part in decoration. Colour is still profuse and brilliant, but painting is more careful and pictorial, less purely decorative. Main surfaces are divided into panels by moulded ribs with carved bases at the intersections. Hammer beams are corbelled or have pendant angels, shields, and heraldic badges at their ends, while the spandrels of braces are filled with tracery, geometrical or floral. Screens are monumental, a mass of mouldings and tracery, with upstanding, spreading finials.

Perpendicular Gothic .-Perpendicular Gothic (about 1375-1540), known on the Continent as the Flamboyant, also called the Florid or Debased, is marked by horizontal and perpendicular lines. The piers are made up of large clusters of small hexagonal or octagonal columns, grouped in diamond form, with double engaged bases, marked by mouldings, the capitals of plain projecting mouldings. Arches are depressed, four-centred.

Vaults are clad with fan-shaped tracery, intersected by floriated and heraldic bosses and richly carved, niched, and crocketed pendants. Doorways usually have square heads over the arches, or the top of the arch is formed into a pediment, the tympanum of which, with the spandrels, is filled with sculpture, carved flowers, or inlay. Windows in the early period were large and tall, with the peculiarity that the horizontal transomes divide them into two or three lights, while the mullions are carried through to the head of the window, with plain foiled arches between. In the later style the windows became broad, more depressed, culminating in the square head. The whole of the wall space is divided into panels by mouldings. Carving is bold with deep undercutting and piercing, but mouldings are broad and shallow, not very complicated, but much decorated. Early foliage and flowers, in carving and painting, are beautiful copies after natural models, including roses and the characteristic poppy heads; later it becomes conventional and fantastic. Sculpture is largely introduced. Colouring is vivid, but more restricted to ornamental parts. There is full use of wood, carved and painted, and in domestic work moulded plaster- work, in the Tudor period mostly of the strapwork and pargetting types, the former coloured and gilded, the latter usually black or brown and white.

Debased Gothic.-Debased Gothic (154o-164o), of the Tudor and Jacobean periods, is chiefly notable for its general impression of heaviness, the horizontal and perpendicular lines being accentuated. Arches, doorways, and windows are depressed, the last having square heads, vertical mullions, and usually no foliations; the doorways with an outer rectangular moulding, ending about half-way down in a corbel or foliation. Profiles are flat. We find embattled cornices and parapets. Carving is lavish but flat, with some piercing, and much use of turning for wood screens, etc. Wainscoting is much in fashion and decoration is varied. Though the style lacks grandeur or elegance, it has a certain dignity and a great air of comfort for domestic architecture, and in decoration, carving and surface ornamentation was supplemented by a freer use of hangings and textiles generally. It was largely influenced by the ideas of the Renaissance.