FRANCE. It originated in France, in the region about Paris, the region of the free communes, where there were no hampering traditions. It connected itself with the Romanesque schools of Normandy, Lombardy, and Picardy. The Ile de-France alone shows all the preparatory stages, between 1100 and 1140, from Morienval to Saint Germer and Saint Denis, which are all but purely Romanesque in their forms, except in the vaulting. Architecture was still in the hands of the monasteries. Then comes the period of transitional Gothic, from c. 1150 to 1200, includ ing the great group of earliest cathedrals, Senlis, Noyon, Leon, Sens, and greatest of all, Notre Dame (q.v.) in Paris. In buildings such as these the flying buttress is fully employed; the column replaces the Romanesque pier; vaults are made higher and perfected in structure. But the style is still rather stern and plain. The period of fully developed Gothic of the first half of the thirteenth century, when Notre Dame is com pleted, and the famous cathedrals of Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, and Beauvais are built, is the period that carries the principles to their logical conclusion in every detail; Gothic ornament is invented as a system expressed in tracery, in stained glass, in floral and vegetable ornament, in an eneyelopfedic series of figured sculpture that made the cathedrals a mirror of the uni verse as interpreted by mediaeval thought. Com plete mastery over material made it possible to raise the main vaults from the 108 feet at Notre Dame to the 160 feet at Beauvais. Desire for absolute consistency led to the adoption of a Gothic grouped pier instead of the earlier column, with members corresponding to the ribs of the vaulting and the moldings of the arcades, so that these lines flowed uninterruptedly upward. The nave of Saint Denis marks (about 1250) the climax of delicacy in, and the doge of, the heroic stage, as its apse and facade had marked, a century before, the close of the tentative stage. Champagne, Normandy, Anjou, Burgundy, and parts of Central France had by the second decade of the thirteenth century accepted the new style as developed around Paris. But neither Auvergne, Brittany, nor the entire South had accepted it as yet. Where it did prevail the multitude of local schools, so clearly marked in Romanesque times, gradually disappeared. An almost uniform type prevailed. In plan: an enlarged choir with aisle and radiating chapels; no crypt; a short tran sept; three or five aisles; and sometimes a con tinuous line of aisle chapels. In elevation: a western facade with two flanking towers, three prominent portals, and a wheel or rose window in the centre; no expanse of walls, all the space between piers being occupied by windows filled with tracery and stained glass; an exterior in which figured and ornamental sculpture covered every surface, and flying buttresses marked the place of inner piers and vaults; an interior in which the old Romanesque gallery above the aisles dwindled to a mere base for the great line of clearstory windows, and where scientific knowledge was used to obtain effects of rhythm, of ascending lines, and delicacy of proportions. In the rich decoration the characteristic feature is the abandonment of classic and, indeed, of all traditional design, and the direct recourse to natural fauna and flora for models, which were of the greatest variety and truth. No period has
so beautifully reproduced foliage and flowers in stone. There were differences; for example, the facade towers terminate in spires at Chartres Cathedral, while at Notre Dame, Lion, Amiens, and elsewhere they have square terminations. Other differences, though not fundamental; make special schools of Gothic in Burgundy (Notre Dame at Dijon, Cathedral Auxerre) and in Normandy (Cathedral Coutances, Bayeux, and SC‘ez), while the Ile - de - France, Picardy, and Champagne are practically one school. If a single building were selected to typify perfect Gothic it would be Amiens Cathedral, for both internal and external effects. The exaggeration of delicacy and height next attempted at Beauvais Cathedral was both constructively and esthetically a fail ure. Other great contemporary Works were the cathedrals of Bourges, Le Mans (choir), and Soissons. In one thing only can we remain in doubt: that is how the facade would have been treated at this perfect period, for the facades then conceived (e.g. Rheims and Amiens) were not executed until the fourteenth or fifteenth century, those of Paris and Laon having been planned before the time of full bloom. While the fourteenth century carried on many of these earlier plans, it began very few churches. The terrible wars, the political confusion and im poverishment prevented it. The most classic and beautiful example is Saint Ouen at Rouen, worthy of a place beside those enumerated, but lacking somewhat in vitality, so that it belongs to the doctrinaire stage, illustrated elsewhere in Normandy (Sees and Caen, Saint Pierre). The final stage, which corresponds practically to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is the concern more of the decorator than the architect, for no constructive problems are involved, and the novelties are due to a desire for merely formal variations. All manner of new forms of arches—surbased, reversed—are invented; there is a surcharge of ornament; unity and simplicity disappear, the use of vaulting-ribs as surface ornaments, which would have been abhorrent, is allowed, though not as much as in England and Germany. The term flamboyant (q.v.) is characteristic of both the sinuousness and glar ing qualities of this style. Saint Riquier, Saint Maclou at Rouen, Notre Dame de l'Epine near Chalons, Saint Wulfrand at Abbeville, and the church at Brou, are the principal works of this age, some of them exemplifying the transition to. Renaissance ornament.
Consult: Moore, Development and Character of Gothic Architecture (New York, 1899), for Early Gothic in all countries; Gonse, L'art gothique (Paris, 1890) ; Viollet-le-Duc, Diction naire raisonne de l'architecture franqaise (Paris, 1858-68) ; the great volumes of Archives of the Commission des monuments historiques (Paris. 1855-72) ; Gurlitt, Die Boukunst Frankreichs (Dresden, n.d.), a folio with photographic plates; and the photographs taken for the Government by Robert and others.