NIKITA GANGADHAR THOSAR

GOTHIC AND
ROLL NO: 22
HUMANITIES
SEM 3
ROMANESQUE PROF. VINITA THAKUR
VIVA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE.
ARCHITECTURE
1. Report Based on the BBC Documentary:
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE:
It is originated in England in 12th century. Architecture was the most
important and original art form during the gothic period. This style was
spread very quickly.
Christianity also had a great influence for the rise of gothic
architecture. British museum, Canterbury cathedral are the most
beautiful and well-known Christian churches of gothic style. It was a
new start of light and space that would define not just architecture but
a faith too.
Main characteristics of gothic architecture are pointed arches, glories
stained glass windows, ribbed roofing, flying buttresses etc.
• Canterbury cathedral:
One of the oldest and most famous Christian structure in England.
A building with a silvery limestone tower

• Lincoln: Tallest building in medieval age.

• Salisbury: Highest surviving spire, tall, and skinny nave. This

cathedral took only 38 centuries to build.

• Westminster abbey: Also known as collegiate church of Saint

Peter at Westminster, which was reconstructed to make a change
in mindset of people after the plague of black death.
Exterior had flying buttresses which distributes the load equally.
Large windows, rose window, fan vault, dripping pendent are the
characteristics of interior. The style with which the Westminster
church was created was the English perpendicular style. The
new style was arrived in England called as England perpendicular
 style. In this style largest stained-glass windows of height 72 feet
and width 82 feet were made. Walls reduced to grid patterns.
Perpendicular tower rises 225 feet.

Most of the gothic structures are well known for paintings which
depicts the life of medieval age.

• Arundel castle: The structure is double bailey castle and shows a

focus view of attitudes towards life and death.

• Great octagonal Ely cathedral: It is the most famous

perpendicular style architecture. The most of perpendicular
windows are carved and reinstalled.

• Gothic art was becoming a means of personal communication

with Gods. Gothic art achieved a feeling of elevation in light.
2. Difference between Romanesque architecture and Gothic
architecture.

Romanesque architecture:
Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of medieval
Europe characterized by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the
beginning date of the Romanesque style, with proposals ranging from the 6th to
the 11th century, this later date being the most commonly held.

Gothic architecture:
Gothic architecture is an architectural style that flourished in Europe during the
high and late middle ages. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was
succeeded by renaissance architecture. It originated in 12th century northern
France and England as a development of Norman architecture.
Gothic architecture has many features like vertical lines, ribbed vault, flying
buttresses, pointed arches that the most clearly makes Gothic building look
different from Roman and Romanesque work.

1. ARCHES:

• Romanesque style round arches:

1. The arches used in Romanesque architecture are nearly always
semicircular, for openings such as doors and windows, for vaults and for
arcades.
2. Wide doorways are usually surmounted by a semi-circular arch, except
where a door with a lintel is set into a large arched recess and surmounted
by a semi-circular "lunette" with decorative carving.
• Gothic style pointed arches:
1. One of the common characteristics the Gothic style is the pointed arch,
which was widely used both in structure and decoration.
2. The pointed arch did not originate in Gothic architecture; they had been
employed for centuries in the Near East in pre-Islamic as well as Islamic
architecture.
3. In Gothic architecture, particularly in the later Gothic styles, they became
the most visible and characteristic element, giving a sensation of verticality
and pointing upward, like the spires.
4. Gothic rib vaults covered the nave, and pointed arches were commonly
used for the arcades, windows, doorways, in the tracery, and especially in
the later Gothic styles decorating the façades.
 2. VAULTS:
• Romanesque style vaults:
Vaults of stone or brick took on several different forms and showed marked
development during the period.

• Barrel vault:
1. The simplest type of vaulted roof is the barrel vault in which a single arched
surface extends from wall to wall, the length of the space to be vaulted, for
example, the nave of a church.
2. An important example, which retains Medieval paintings, is the vault
of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, France, of the early 12th century.
3. However, the barrel vault generally required the support of solid walls, or
walls in which the windows were very small.
• Groin vault:

1. A groin vault is almost always square in plan and is constructed of two-

barrel vaults intersecting at right angles.
2. Groin vaults occur in early Romanesque buildings, notably at Speyer
Cathedral where the high vault of about 1060 is the first employment in
Romanesque architecture of this type of vault for a wide nave.
3. In later buildings employing ribbed vaultings, groin vaults are most
frequently used for the less visible and smaller vaults, particularly in crypts
and aisles.
4. Unlike a ribbed vault, the entire arch is a structural member. Groin vaults
are frequently separated by transverse arched ribs of low profile.
• Gothic style vault:
• Rib vault:
1. The Gothic rib vault was one of the essential elements that made possible
the great height and large windows of the Gothic style.
2. Unlike the semi-circular barrel vault of Roman and Romanesque buildings,
where the weight pressed directly downward, and required thick walls and
small windows, the Gothic rib vault was made of diagonal crossing arched
ribs.
3. These ribs directed the thrust outwards to the corners of the vault, and
downwards via slender colonettes and bundled columns, to the pillars and
columns below.
4. The space between the ribs was filled with thin panels of small pieces of
stone, which were much lighter than earlier groin vaults.

3. Walls:
• Romanesque style walls:
1. The walls of Romanesque buildings are often of massive thickness with
few and comparatively small openings. They are often double shells,
filled with rubble.
2. The building material differs greatly across Europe, depending upon the
local stone and building traditions.
3. In Italy, Poland, much of Germany and parts of the Netherlands, brick is
generally used. Other areas saw extensive use of limestone, granite and
flint.

• Gothic style walls:

1. Walls are thin as compared to Romanesque architecture but there are
big windows on wall.
4. Buttresses:
• Romanesque style buttresses:
1. Because of the massive nature of Romanesque walls, buttresses are not
a highly significant feature, as they are in Gothic architecture.
2. Romanesque buttresses are generally of flat square profile and do not
project a great deal beyond the wall. In the case of aisled churches, barrel
vaults, or half-barrel vaults over the aisles helped to buttress the nave, if it
was vaulted.
Buttresses

• Gothic style flying buttresses:

• Flying buttresses:
1. An important feature of Gothic architecture was the flying buttress, a half-
arch outside the building which carried the thrust of weight of the roof or
vaults inside over a roof or an aisle to a heavy stone column.
2. The buttresses were placed in rows on either side of the building, and were
often topped by heavy stone pinnacles, both to give extra weight and for
additional decoration.
3. Buttresses had existed since Roman times, usually set directly against the
building, but the Gothic vaults were more sophisticated. In later structures,
the buttresses often had several arches, each reaching in to a different
level of the structure. The buttresses permitted the buildings to be both
taller, and to have thinner walls, with greater space for windows.
4. Windows and openings:
• Romanesque style windows:
1. Windows are small and hence there is dark inside the structure.
 • Gothic style windows:
1. The simplest type of Gothic window is undoubtedly the lancet, being, as
the name implies, long and narrow, the head being formed of two arcs
meeting at a point more or less acute. The space between the small
arches and the main arch is composed of plain masonry pierced with a
quatrefoil.
2. The most important form of Gothic architectural art was stained
glass window. Stained glass windows are closely tied to
the architectural developments of Gothic cathedrals.

5. Arcades:
• Romanesque style arcades:
1. An arcade is a row of arches, supported on piers or columns. They occur in
the interior of large churches, separating the nave from the aisles, and in
large secular interiors spaces, such as the great hall of a castle, supporting
the timbers of a roof or upper floor. Arcades also occur in cloisters and
atriums, enclosing an open space.
2. Arcades are generally in two stories. The arcade that divides the nave aisle
in a church is typically of two stages, with a third stage of window openings
as the clerestory rising above them.

• Gothic style arcades:

1. In the Gothic architectural tradition, the arcade can be located in the
interior, in the lowest part of the wall of the nave, supporting
the triforium and the clerestory in a cathedral, or on the exterior, in which
they are usually part of the walkways that surround
the courtyard and cloisters.

6. Columns:
• Romanesque style columns:
1. In Romanesque architecture, columns are essential structural
components. Monolithic columns cut from a single piece of atone were
used in Italy, as they had been in Roman and early Christian architecture.
 • Gothic style columns:
1. The slender columns and lighter systems of thrust allowed for larger
windows and lighter.

Conclusion:
Structural elements: Romanesque Gothic
1. Arches Round Pointed
2. Vaults Barrel or Groin Ribbed
3. walls Thick, with small Thinner, with large
openings openings
4. Buttresses Wall buttresses of low Wall buttresses of high
projection projection, and flying
buttresses
5. Windows Round arches, Pointed arches, often
sometimes paired with tracery
6. Piers and columns Cylindrical columns, Cylindrical and clustered
rectangular piers columns, complex piers.
7. Gallery arcades Two openings under an Two pointed openings
arch, paired. under a pointed arch