Achim Timmermann of Often Staggering Size and Great Formal Vir- Tuosity, and Looming Over the Skylines of Many European Cities E
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Buchrezension 29. November 2005 Book Review Editor: R. Donandt Robert Bork, Great Spires: Skyscrapers of the New Jerusalem. Kölner Architekturstudien, 76. Köln: Abteilung Architekturgeschichte des Kunsthistorischen Instituts der Universität zu Köln 2003. 504 p. Numerous b/w illustrations and plans. ISBN 0615128300. Achim Timmermann Of often staggering size and great formal vir- exchange that gave great spire design its unique- tuosity, and looming over the skylines of many ness and innovative momentum. Assessing the European cities even today, the spire was by far symbolic signifi cance these colossal structures the most conspicuous feature of the high and late would have had for their medieval audiences, the Gothic church. Curiously, however, it has also re- author remarks that in their heavenward push and mained one of the least researched. This splendid aesthetic complexity spires referenced and glori- study represents the fi rst book-length monograph fi ed both, the City of God, and worldly authori- on this important, but much-neglected subject. ty; spires therefore simultaneously visualized a Bork‘s chief interest concerns what he calls ‚the theological concept, and the interests, needs and great spire‘ - a descriptive category developed in aspirations of those powerful institutions that had analogy to Christopher Wilson‘s notion of ‚the initiated their construction. To characterize this great church‘ [1] - and here referring to spires of dual function, the author coins the catching phra- considerable formal, geometrical, and structural se ‚skyscrapers of the New Jerusalem‘. intricacy - essentially those of the cathedrals and great burgher churches in France, the Low Coun- In its assessment of the very relationship bet- tries, the Rhineland, and the southern parts of the ween built spire and ‚New‘ or ‚Heavenly‘ Jeru- German-speaking lands. Spires lacking these dis- salem, Bork‘s opening chapter could arguably tinguishing features - such as the imposing, but have been more extensive, particularly in view of plain, timber spires in the area of Backsteingotik recent scholarly tendencies that question the via- - are excluded from this investigation [2]. bility of St. John‘s vision as a hermeneutical tool for our reading and understanding of the Gothic The book opens with an introductory chapter that church [3]. Evidence that could have been used to considers Gothic spires in a variety of conceptual, counter such revisionist views is, at least in part, historiographic, and semantic contexts. Accoun- of iconographical nature; examples are provided ting for the relative neglect of medieval spires in by the trumpet-playing angels on the corners of the scholarly discourse, Bork rightly notes that Freiburg Minster‘s spire octogon [4], or by the „architectural scholarship has emphasized interi- incorporation of Utrecht‘s cathedral spire into ors over exteriors. Because spires are essentially the background of the paradisiacal Adoration of sculptural objects with little or no interior space, the Lamb panel in the bottom register of Jan and they could not be readily appreciated within the Hubert van Eyck‘s Ghent Altarpiece [5]. infl uential scholarly tradition that defi ned ar- chitecture in terms of the shaping of space“ (p. The main body of the book is divided into fi ve 13); at the same time, Bork continues, the study parts. Part I explores the structural and ideolo- of spires has also been hampered by a division gical genesis of the great spire, opening with a of the scholarly community into distinct national prologue that traces the ‚architectural iconogra- (particularly French and German) camps - a di- phy‘ of the Gothic spire to two distinct architec- vision that often makes it diffi cult to discern and tural traditions originating in classical Antiquity, appreciate the patterns of international artistic and continued and adapted throughout the early 1 Buchrezension 29. November 2005 Book Review Editor: R. Donandt Christian and medieval periods. These comprise often also at the ends of their transepts or, as at fi rstly the free-standing Greco-Roman tomb ca- Chartres, on either side of the chevet, but owing nopy, and its early medieval spin-offs (such as to factors such as urban fragmentation, economic lantern towers, gabled belfry- and crossing to- constriction, and a royal policy that favored Cis- wers), and secondly, the Roman fortifi ed gate- tercian and mendicant institutions, none of these house, as well as its Carolingian and Ottonian projects was brought to a conclusion. Commen- relatives, the great single- or double-towered ting on the truncation of eastern French spires in westworks. In the subsequent chapter Bork ex- the mid-13th century, the author astutely remarks changes his wide-angle for a zoom-lens, and fo- that „the cathedrals of Chartres and Reims (...) cuses on the appearance of the fi rst great spires in are so glorious in their present state that it is hard mid-twelfth century France - an appearance that to think of them as incomplete fragments, even coincided with the emergence of the Gothic style though they lack the dramatic multi-spired sil- itself. Indeed, the author convincingly demons- houette that their original designers intended“ (p. trates that the same formal and aesthetic prin- 76). ciples that govern the interior design of Suger‘s choir at St. Denis - in particular those identifi ed Part III is concerned with what the author calls by Paul Frankl as dynamism, diagonality, inter- the ‚Golden Age‘ of spire construction, and, as re- connectedness and partiality - also determine the gards sheer scope, analytical depth, and scholarly make-up of the earliest Gothic spires. A case in originality clearly represents the most impressive point is furnished by the colossal south spire of and compelling part of the study. It begins with a Chartres Cathedral, where the diagonal lines of discussion of the facade and spire projects of the the octagonal spire cone, decorative gables, and Rhenish cathedrals of Strasbourg and Cologne, fl anking, steeply-roofed corner aediculae „create and the Minster of Freiburg, all commenced in an impression of dynamic visual elision (...), just the decades around 1300. Focusing both on the as the diagonal rib vaults do in the Gothic church extant monuments and on a series of surviving interior“ (p. 41). architectural drawings (so-called Visierungen) that document the genesis of the spire schemes In the following Part (II) the author examines the for Strasbourg and Cologne (both of which were further development of the Gothic spire in later only completed in the 15th and late 19th cen- 12th- and 13th-century France and England, dis- turies respectively), Bork concludes that it was tinguishing between two divergent groups that here, in these Rhenish workshops, that up-to-date emanated from the kind of design represented by French Rayonnant ideas about the skeletization the south spire of Chartres Cathedral. The fi rst of form were for the fi rst time brought to bear on of these groups - called the ‚Anglo-Norman‘, spire design, to create the fi rst spires with open- and comprising, among other spires, those of St. work pyramids [6]. In the two following chapters Etienne in Caen, Coutances Cathedral, and the the author traces the subsequent history of the English cathedrals of Salisbury and Lichfi eld - is openwork spire type (and, to a lesser extent, also characterized by its incorporation of the tall, py- of competing designs) in the later 14th and 15th ramidal spire cone, and, at the same time, by its centuries, particularly in the south of the Holy rejection of the octagonal storey that mediates at Roman Empire, where prestigious spire schemes Chartres between the four-sided tower block and were initiated by princely, episcopal, as well as the eight-sided spire pyramid. Buildings belon- civic patrons. One of the earliest appropriations ging to the second group - labelled by Bork the of a Freiburg-type openwork spire in this area ‚eastern French‘, and including the cathedrals can be found in the Charterhouse of Straßengel of Chartres, Reims, Amiens, and Notre-Dame in Styria, constructed around the middle of the in Paris - were to receive more complex spires, 14th century under the patronage of the Habs- 2 Buchrezension 29. November 2005 Book Review Editor: R. Donandt burg Archduke Rudolph IV. It was also Rudolph house for St. Bartholomew‘s in Kolín (comple- IV who in 1359 laid the cornerstone for the tower ted before 1378), but could, on occasion, also be that would eventually be surmounted by the lar- applied to spire schemes, with the crossing tower gest and most sophisticated openwork spire of the of the Cistercian Abbey Church of Bebenhausen eastern Empire - that of St. Stephen‘s in Vienna. (1407-1409) furnishing a prominent example. In contrast to the highly transparent spire cones If buttressing pyramids were especially attracti- of its Rhenish models, however, Vienna‘s south ve for their formal sophistication, domed termi- spire - completed in 1433 under Hans Prachatitz nations were primarily chosen for their highly - is of „such narrow proportions that it registers symbolic potential, as their form could evoke as an opaque but fi nely textured spike“ (p. 170). both, the hallowed cupola churches of Jerusalem, Other spire projects explored in this part of the Rome, and Byzantium, and - as in the case of study include those of Prague Cathedral‘s aborti- Madern Gerthener‘s design for the west tower of ve west facade (a project that may have involved a St. Bartholomew‘s in Frankfurt - contemporary narrow, needle-like spire rather than an openwork imperial or royal crowns (Frankfurt then being spire, but that never went beyond the planning the site of the imperial elections). stage), of Vienna Cathedral‘s north tower (begun 1450, but not fi nished), and of the southeast to- In a subsequent Part (IV), Bork looks at the inter- wer of Meissen Cathedral, begun in ca.