Renaissance Gothic – a dazzling architectural explosion

Associated media

Renaissance Gothic. Architecture and the Arts in Northern Europe, 1470–1540

By Ethan Matt Kaveler

Despite the seeming paradox of its title, this handsome book really does have an important core topic, largely unexplored, even in German scholarship on architecture, let alone in English.  Ethan Matt Kaveler, professor at the University of Toronto, has provided an essential survey of a dazzling architectural explosion of decorative form, normally called Late Gothic.  Yale University Press should be commended for adding this beautiful exposition (with sharp images, most taken by the author) of a distinctive period style, which complements their earlier publication of Norbert Nussbaum's book, German Gothic Church Architecture (2000).

This phenomenon was not limited to Germany, nor even to architecture.  Another virtue of Kaveler's book is that he reveals how this refined ornament was employed not only on complex ribbed ceiling decorations, but also on screens, pulpits, window tracery, sculptural niches and tabernacles in both stone and wood, and even in painted simulations of architecture.  His recent essay in the 2010 Jan Gossart catalogue, included here, richly demonstrates how much that sophisticated court painter and draughtsman of the early 16th century drew upon such forms.  And compared with the diffusion of almost any other artistic vocabulary, this Late Gothic ornamental vocabulary enjoyed an almost unmatched geographical range of application, albeit with different regional variations and appellations.  The first dozen photos present buildings from the modern countries of Germany, England, Belgium, France, Austria, Czech Republic, Spain, and Switzerland.

            So a definably transnational phenomenon was well under way around the turn of the 16th century, even if the author, against the grain of conventional use and with an odd desire to signal this later time period, still insists on applying the term 'Renaissance' to a Northern European creative burst of Late Gothic in architecture.  While he is correct that most scholars, notably Henry Russell Hitchcock in English, have sought to trace the gradual assimilation of Italian architectural vocabulary into Germany and the Low Countries, Kaveler seems determined to insist on a parity with that established prestige of Italian architecture (almost the only buildings discussed in canonical surveys of European buildings) through his choice of using the term 'Renaissance Gothic’.

Even so, he notes that 'the antique, however it was interpreted, was understood as [being] opposed to the Gothic,' i.e. 'modern,' an opposition that echoes Michael Baxandall's contrast for German sculpture (The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, 1980 – note also his use of the Renaissance as a period term) between native deutsch and 'imported' Welsch forms.  One can acknowledge the need for a more focused new term for this creative phase that straddles the turn of the 16th century without endorsing a term as oxymoronic and seemingly (if misleadingly) hybrid as 'Renaissance Gothic'. 

For these very reasons regional scholars have designated French monuments 'Flamboyant', English ones 'Perpendicular' (though aspects of the 'Decorated' seem to condition this style) and German ones as a period style that is positive, exceptional, and distinctly national (Sondergotik, although they begin earlier than this book, with the Parler family around 1350).  Kaveler attempts to break down these nationalist and regional approaches, and he seeks to distinguish this near-century from earlier Gothic, but his own resulting period term will ultimately confuse prospective readers.

Nevertheless, Kaveler does note with good reason how much structure and ornament uniquely fuse in so many of these constructions.  After a scene-setting Introduction, which discusses period definition and the state of scholarship on it, he focuses on the design principles of this ornament, particularly for tracery, which could be readily transferred and applied to various surfaces.  As he notes, 'amazement and wonder' remained the goals of such creations, rather than spatial unity or integration, a separate effect, albeit often overlapping, especially in hall churches.   Ultimately, such visual splendour suggests the presence of a heavenly space ('exuberant church architecture marked boundaries and signaled sacrality'), appropriate for a church interior.  Perhaps that suggestion, by means of ornament, carried over to a ruler's palace or even to a city hall?  Yet this book concentrates chiefly on church structures.  Kaveler's other essay on the ruler tombs at Brou in Burgundy (2004, included here) offers one expansion of his ecclesiastical focus.

            Chapter 1, 'Ornament and aesthetics', considers the essential use of geometry in these ornamental constructions, suggesting that geometry resounds with heavenly order.  Also very welcome for its interpretative synthesis of German scholarship is a full discussion later of 'Natural forms' (Chapter 4), especially ribs shown as branches (Astwerk) that run riot to inhabit many vaults and surfaces, including sculpture consoles of Late Gothic, again redolent of the miraculous but also of a Germanic primitivism.  Chapter 2, 'Flamboyant forms,' analyses the structures of net vaults, formed out of attached ribs. This chapter also includes English Perpendicular, even as Kaveler notes that this principally French phenomenon largely dominated facades and porches.

Sometimes the organization of the book seems arbitrary within a largely continuous exposition.  This study suggests the range of visual patterns without opting for an alternative organization that could have emerged through either regional or functional distinctions. Chapter 3, 'Microarchitecture,' however, considers ornament as essential to smaller forms, ranging from sculpture frames to church furnishings, such as pulpits, sacrament houses, and jubés (rood screens).  Here added discussion of period metalwork and stained glass would have been valuable: 'much Gothic that promoted comparison with gold metalwork presented itself as an earthly counterpart to celestial architecture'.  

The final chapter, 'Deconstruction and hybridity’, considers how some of these forms, especially ribs, seem to dissolve or fail to find resolution, particularly after classical forms became an alternative design option.  In other monuments, especially paintings, (e.g. those of Jan Gossart) or glass, Late Gothic may be expressly contrasted with the classical vocabulary of Italian Renaissance structures and frames.  Knowing so much about period painting, Kaveler might have profitably expanded this discussion beyond his main Gossart examples.

At one point  Kaveler tantalizingly itemizes other self-conscious designers in various media who worked successfully in both styles.  While this list could be expanded, e.g. Hans Holbein the Elder, not analysing their choices is an interpretative opportunity missed.  In scattered sections, Kaveler does discuss the important case of Benedikt Ried, versatile architect of Bohemia.  But he still fails to evaluate why other contemporary patrons in such capitals as Buda or Cracow or the Nassau family in Breda would instead invest their cultural prestige in imported architectural forms, the 'new fashion' from Italy.  Surely within a framework of stylistic options, any particular choice would carry some significance or cultural meaning?

Ultimately, Kaveler's book offers a valuable descriptive survey, but not much evaluation of why such a decorative version of architecture flourished and eventually waned.  That answer is even more difficult to discern across so many countries and kinds of structure.  He does briefly suggest that itinerant family lodges of designers or masons (Parler or Roriczer in Germany, Keldermans in the Netherlands) and dissemination of their drawings contributed to the wider distribution of such inventive forms.  Why tastes changed after about 1540 is also never really made clear, but that argument would also necessitate more evaluation of the purposes for these complex, often playful effects.  Kaveler does stress the importance of geometry or visual complexity to the period viewer, and he notes that ornament can be 'symbolic, communicative, and aesthetic,' opting in the end, to declare, 'this is an essay on the aesthetic of Renaissance Gothic'. Thus the cultural significance(s) of these dazzling designs, especially in church settings, remains elusive. 

Nevertheless, the interested viewer (and potential architecture pilgrim) will have much to gain about an unfamiliar yet fascinating and widespread Late Gothic episode from this encompassing overview.  Even after such a cultural and temporal gap, modern visitors will still be equally entranced, despite the scholarly tone of this handsome volume.

Renaissance Gothic. Architecture and the Arts in Northern Europe, 1470–1540  by Ethan Matt Kaveler is published by Yale University Press. 332 pp., 279 illus, most in colour, £45.00. ISBN 978-0-300-16792-4