AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ART LIX
The third of five posts on the long, complex history of the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame.
III. The Thirteenth-Century Revision
A series of events occasioned a crisis at Nôtre Dame in the last years of the twelfth century:
1194 a fire destroys the 12th-century cathedral of Nôtre Dame in Chartres
1195 the archbishop of Bourges, Henri de Sully (a relative of Maurice) begins the rebuilding of the cathedral of Saint Etienne.
1196 Maurice de Sully dies after 36 years as bishop of Paris.
1197 Eudes de Sully, brother of Henri, is elected bishop of Paris
The designs of the new cathedrals of Chartres and Bourges radically reoriented Gothic architecture. Their architects suddenly understood the significance of the flying buttress and used it to its full potential across the entire building. By shifting the load-bearing responsibility from the wall to the exterior support, the height of the vaults and the size of the size of the clerestory could be greatly increased.
l: St Etienne, Bourges; r: Nôtre Dame, Chartres
At Chartres, the clerestory windows were expanded upwards, while at Bourges the nave arcades were raised to dizzying heights. The new giganticism led to a streamlining of the elevation to three stories. The Chartres and, to a lesser extent, the Bourges solutions were immediately adopted across northern France. Cathedrals in Reims, Amiens, Rouen, Valenciennes, and Arras suddenly—and mysteriously—went up in smoke and were rebuilt in the new high Gothic style.
Some time around 1205, the fourth master mason of Nôtre Dame informed Eudes de Sully of an inconvenient truth: his cathedral had become out-dated before it was finished. The four story elevation and careful balance of horizontal and vertical elements were suddenly very old fashioned in the wake of the High Gothic revolution. Apparently unwilling to be the bishop of an unstylish cathedral, Eudes authorized a halt to the works and a complete rebuilding of the nave and choir elevations.
The oculus level would be removed and the clerestory windows would be extended downwards to the tribune gallery. Because this arrangement reduced the amount of masonry wall, flying buttresses were added around the entire perimeter of the church. The thirteenth-century revision added 40 more years to the project and untold financial resources, most of which Eudes supplied from his enormous personal fortune.
There were two unspoken rules about Gothic church façades: 1) the exterior should reflect the disposition of the interior spaces, and 2) the portals and rose window should be the predominant features around which all others coalesced. The grid-like twelfth-century façade of Nôtre Dame had metaphorically expressed the horizontal/vertical equilibrium of the interior, but the revision of the nave elevation had tip that balance in favor of the vertical. To address that change without ripping down the entire façade, the fourth mason inserted a second gallery, consisting of tall slender colonnettes, at the base of the towers. This visual trick added a sharply vertical accent the design and brought the west front up to the height of the roof, while leaving the rose window in place.
The names of the master masons of the later 13th and early 14th centuries--Jean de Chelles, Pierre de Montreuil, Pierre de Chelles, Jean Ravy, and Jean le Bouteiller--survive. By 1250, the High Gothic style had been supplanted by the rayonnant style, which was purely decorative in nature. The two transept façades at Nôtre Dame, which were constructed in this late stage, are delicate screens of brittle tracery, pinnacles and finials. The magnificent rose windows extend across the entire structure with virtually no wall remaining. The sculptural programs of the transept façades reflect the cathedral's dual dedication: the south façade, which opened on to the Bishop's Palace, is devoted to the Life of St. Stephen, while the north, which led to the chapter's precinct and the hôtel dieu, was dedicated to the Virgin.
The dematerialization of the wall seen in the transept façades could go no further. When the vaults of Beauvais cathedral collapsed in 1274, the limits of height had been reached. The Gothic experiment was over. Other churches of great beauty would be built in the Gothic style well into the 16th century but no further structural breakthroughs occurred in tall building technology until the 19th century.
