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The Gothic Cathedral: Design and Meaning Author(S): Otto G The Gothic Cathedral: Design and Meaning Author(s): Otto G. von Simson Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Oct., 1952), pp. 6-16 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/987608 . Accessed: 01/04/2012 05:25 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and Society of Architectural Historians are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. http://www.jstor.org OTTO G. VON S1MSON teaches at the University of Chicago. This article is drawn from two public lectures he gave last January for the Committee on Social Thought there. He wishes to dedicate it to his mother. His analysis of the philosophical approach to architecture, which St. Augustine, St. Bernard and other eminent divines fostered, would give pause to those who think we ought to make up our minds as to what the cathedral was built with: all science or all intuition. THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL: DESIGN AND MEANING Within the last century the history of architecture has recently attracted a good deal of attention. We have sought to explain the origin and meaning of the Gothic been remindedthat the Christian sanctuary is, liturgically cathedral by singling out, one after the other, three of and mystically, an image of the heavenly Jerusalem, its main aspects: function (Gothic solution of statical the eschatological vision described by the Book of problems), design (Gothic form as the expression of Revelation. The medieval dedication rite establishes this certain esthetic principles), and significance (Gothic relationship in explicit terms and the twelfth and thir- form as the symbolic expression of certain ideas). The teenth centuries appear singularly preoccupied with interpretations based upon each of these three aspects this symbolic significance of sacred architecture. May stand in a curious relationship to one another. Developed not this significance have actually determined the design polemically and antithetically, each has sought to inter- of the cathedral? Indeed, a brilliant and provocative pret Gothic architecture in terms of one of the three attempt has been made recently to interpret all the aspects, denying or belittling the significance of the two essential aspects of Gothic design as representations of others. In point of fact, each of the three approaches the celestial city.1 Such an attempt, to be sure, encounters has greatly advanced our knowledge; it seems to us serious difficulties.2 But it is heuristically valuable in today as if they not only complement, but actually that it compels us to define the exact relation between point toward one another, encircling, as it were, a the stylistic structure and the significance of the Gothic truth that lies in their midst. cathedral, throwing an entirely new light upon its Thus it is precisely to the history and analysis of esthetic as well as structural aspects. Gothic form that we owe the knowledge that this form The most striking feature of the new style is a new cannot be entirely understood in terms of stylistic relationship between function and form, structure and development. Gothic architecture emerges suddenly and ornament. In Romanesque (and Byzantine) architecture almost simultaneously with the great expressions of structure is a technical means to an artistic end; it Romanesque art, not its heir or "logical sequel," but remains concealed behind painted or stucco ornaments. its rival and antithesis. The first Gothic art, moreover, Indeed, the entire edifice is often but an invisible scaffold is geographically so closely identified with one territory for the display of great murals and mosaics. These and its historical destinies that the late Henri Foqillon compositions, especially the figure of Christ in Majesty suggested, paradoxically but wisely, that Gothic be surrounded by his heavenly court that usually adorns defined as the Romanesque of the Ile de France. The the Romanesque apse, evoke the symbolic significance new style, finally, seems to have been the creation of a of the sanctuary as an image of the celestial city. That small group of men whose ideas we know and who were the structure of the building is concealed by these images mutual friends; we are prompted to ask whether Gothic reveals the spiritual source of Romanesque "anti- art must not be understood as an expression of these ideas. functionalism": the celestial vision depicted is to make In other words, the stylistic analysis of Gothic archi- us forget that we stand in a building of stone and mortar. tecture has suggested its interpretation as the expression In the Gothic cathedral the relation between structure of certain ideas. And this second approach, the symbolic on the one hand and ornament and its symbolic function one, though long regarded with some suspicion, has on the other is quite different. Here the design is entirely 6 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS, XI, 3 determined by the pattern of the structural members, square. From this figure Roriczer derives all proportions vault ribs and shafts. It has been remarked that the of his edifice inasmuch as its dimensions are related to flowering of the Romanesque mural was in large part one another as are the sides of a sequence of squares due to the technical imperfections of the buildings it the areas of which diminish (or increase) in geometrical adorned, that wall painting declined in the measure progression. The proportions thus obtained the master in which these imperfections were overcome. In Gothic considered to be "according to true measure."5 architecture, the wonderful precision with which every It was not only this late Gothic architect or the single block was shaped in the vault (leaving no ragged Germanlodges that made such modular use of the square. joints that it was necessary to conceal) suggests a new Perhaps the most important single piece of evidence esthetic appreciation of the dignity of structural per- regarding the principles of Gothic design is the famous fection.3 This tectonic is never system concealed but model book by the Picard architect Villard de Honne- rather underscored Gothic wall by painting. Even the court, who was active in the second quarter of the stained windows in and glass submit, composition design, thirteenth century. He, too, demonstrates how to double to the of the stone and metal arma- increasingly pattern (or halve) a square for the purpose of determining ture in which are imbedded. The esthetic function they the proportions of a building, in this case the ground plan of these windows is not the creation of a new only of a cloister. That this is no mere theory is shown by the admit under- luminosity; light they dramatically Villard's plan of one of the towers of Laon Cathedral, scores the web of ribs, and shafts. tracery, considered by him the most beautiful in the world. This new esthetic ascribed to structure cannot dignity This plan indicates, as Ueberwasser has shown, that be understood in terms of modern functionalism. Archi- all horizontal subdivisions of the tower are recessed tectural form reveals function if it shows the actually "according to true measure." interaction of and as it does physical weight support The square-along with the other polygons, such as in the Greek What concerned the Gothic builder temple. the famous 7/4 triangle, which the medieval architect was not such naked of statical function but expression derived from the square-and the proportion "accord- rather the translation of function into an essentially ing to true measure" have determined Gothic design to volume or graphic system. By concealing "dissolving" a remarkable extent. The faqade of Notre Dame of Paris it into a bundle of frail shafts, he obtained the visual is composed of a sequence of four squares developed effect of a on a two-dimensional geometrical grid according to true measure. Of course geometrical formu- With this Gothic archi- surface.4 qualification, however, lae had been used by pre-Gothic architects too. Here, tecture is indeed functionalist. And its emphatic recog- however, they were practical rather than artistic devices nition of structure is all the more remarkable if we of which the observer usually remains unconscious. recall the of the As we symbolic significance sanctuary. Nowhere do they determine the esthetic impression as shall see, the "functionalist" of Gothic art will aspect they do in the Gothic system. One might almost say that us undeistand the nature of its help precise symbolic the development of the style, from its origin to the as the latter is for a correct aspect, just indispensable classical maturity reached in the mid-thirteenthcentury, definition of Gothic functionalism. is marked by the gradual triumph of geometrical pro- It is to hardly necessary today stress the overwhelming portion. If we compare the faqade of Notre Dame with of in importance geometry Gothic design. The reliance the similar and earlier one of Noyon, we realize the on geometrical formulae, apparent in every Gothic increasing clarity with which the geometrical principle ground plan and elevation, is amply attested by medieval is realized in the Paris faqade. documents. So much research has been done in recent The same principle rules over all parts of the Gothic years on this question that I can limit myself to a brief cathedral.
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