TRACERY (from trace, OF. tracer, trasser, Fr. tracer, to trace, track, delineate, from ML. *trartiare, frequentative of Lat. trahcre, to draw, drag). A term used of the kind of architectural detail that is connected with pierced or open ornamentation of any member or unit such as a window, arcade, or gallery. It was de veloped in windows and then extended to almost every part of ecclesiastical structures during the Gothic period. Technically there may be said to be stray examples of simple tracery at an earlier date, as in the case of pierced marble slabs in windows o• screens. but tracery as an art and a system sprang up with the fully developed Gothic style in the first decades of the thirteenth century in France, when the whole wall space over the aisles in church interiors was devoted to enormous windows. one in each bay. (See WINDOW'.) The general frame of each window inclosed those of several separate lights, and above and between their arched summits were minor foiled openings. The mullions, the cusps, the quatrefoil. and other openings formed what is termed the tracery of the windows, which be came more elaborate in the succeeding centuries, seeking ever more complex geometric combina tions of lines. The straight lines gradualh• were replaced in large part by curved lines. The rose o• wheel windows. such as those of Notre Dame. in Paris. and the cathedrals of Rheims and Amiens, illustrate the various stages of this development. This tracery spread grid
nally from the windows until it overran almost every part of the church with its delicate lace patterns, sometimes on a solid ground, some times pierced. The earlier plate traeery had at once given way to the molded tracery. The • period of a Gothic structure can generally be judged with tolerable accuracy by the style of its frac( my. This is particularly the case in Eng land, where two of the three main divisions of the Gothic movement, the Decorated and the Perpendicular, are so called on account of their styles of tracery. which give the key-note to each, and by means of which the merging of ono style into the other can be traced. During the Deco rated period the tracery became more varied in form, being composed of squares, triangles, and other forms, tilled with foils and having the ap pearance of being packed together. This kind of tracery is called 'geometric.' The windows of the transition from Decorated to Perpendicular had tracery of a more flowing character, while that of the Perpendicular (q.v.) period became almost entirely composed of vertical lines. The flam boyant (q.v.) or contemporary style in France had tracery of a very different description, be ing ' as free and as the other was straight and stiff. SeeGOTU 1C ART.