GOTHIC ART. Giorgio Vasari, a pupil of Michelangelo, in writing in the 16th century on the arts of architecture and sculp ture, speaks of the monuments of the middle ages as being built in a style originated by the Goths, those Germanic races untutored in the classics, and describes the "Gothic" style as being a fantastic heap of spires, pinnacles and grotesque decoration lacking in all the simple beauty of the classical orders. It was not until the middle of the 19th century that this statement was widely dis counted.
At the present time the term "Gothic art" is everywhere accepted, though many other names have been suggested. The Gothic period commenced in the 12th century in Middle France and spread through Europe during the 13th, 14th and 15th cen turies when it was at length superseded first in Italy and later in the other countries by that huge revival of the classic known as the Renaissance.
Architecturally, the style is primarily perpendicular, consisting of tall slender pillars supporting graceful pointed arches which often spread like the fronds of a palm tree and which are groined similar to those of the Romanesque period. The thrust of these arches was taken up on the outside of the building by the use of buttresses, sometimes solid but often hollowed out to form ogival flying buttresses which act as props against it, and thus we have a style, when brought into use in cathedrals, not unlike the inverted hull of a ship, supported, as is notably the case in the cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris, with widely set props. Upon this general form, often complicated by the addition of various other abutting structures, is erected point upon point and colonnade upon colon nade, a series of spires or pinnacles, the entire formation present ing a structurally beautiful framework. (See GOTHIC ARCHITEC