Rayonnant
Encyclopedia
Circa
Circa , usually abbreviated c. or ca. , means "approximately" in the English language, usually referring to a date...
1240–1350. Developing out of the High Gothic style, Rayonnant is characterised by a shift in focus away from the great scale and spatial rationalism of buildings like Chartres Cathedral or the nave of Amiens Cathedral
Amiens Cathedral
The Cathedral of Our Lady of Amiens , or simply Amiens Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic cathedral and seat of the Bishop of Amiens...
, towards a greater concern for two dimensional surfaces and the repetition of decorative motifs at different scales. After the mid 14th century, Rayonnant gradually evolved into the Late Gothic, Flamboyant
Flamboyant
Flamboyant is the name given to a florid style of late Gothic architecture in vogue in France from the 14th to the early 16th century, a version of which spread to Spain and Portugal during the 15th century; the equivalent stylistic period in English architecture is called the Decorated Style, and...
style, though as usual with such arbitrary stylistic labels, the point of transition is not clearly defined.
Terminology
The name Rayonnant derives from the attempts of 19th century French art historians (notably Henri FocillonHenri Focillon
Henri Focillon was a French art historian.Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. Professor of Art History at the University of Lyon, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, at the Sorbonne, at the Collège de France and then in the United States, where he went into exile and taught at Yale...
and Ferdinand de Lasteyrie) to classify Gothic styles on the basis of window tracery. Although such efforts are now regarded as mistaken, the resulting terms have to some extent survived (Rayonnant and Flamboyant are still widely used by art historians, though the misleading old term Lancet Gothic has generally given way to High Gothic). On this basis, Focillon and his colleagues adopted the term Rayonnant (from the French word meaning "to radiate") specifically to describe the radiating spokes of the rose windows which flourished during this period. (Some sources incorrectly derive the term from the radiating chapels spreading from the apse
Apse
In architecture, the apse is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome...
, however these were not specifically associated with this period and had been a standard feature of Continental architecture since the 11th century on Romanesque buildings like Cluny Abbey
Cluny Abbey
Cluny Abbey is a Benedictine monastery in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France. It was built in the Romanesque style, with three churches built in succession from the 10th to the early 12th centuries....
and the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela
Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral of the archdiocese of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. The cathedral is the reputed burial-place of Saint James the Greater, one of the apostles of Jesus Christ. It is the destination of the Way of St...
)
Origins and Development of Rayonnant
Although elements of the new style can be found at the Cistercian abbey church of Royaumont (begun 1228, now mostly destroyed), perhaps the most important step in the development of the Rayonnant style was the building of the Abbey Church of St Nicaise, in ReimsReims
Reims , a city in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France, lies east-northeast of Paris. Founded by the Gauls, it became a major city during the period of the Roman Empire....
(begun 1231). Although this church was entirely destroyed during the French Revolution, its facade is well known from 18th century engravings. The architect (Hugues de Libergier) took various existing elements of the Gothic decorative vocabulary and used them to create a very new visual aesthetic. Perhaps the most influential feature of the Church of St Nicaise was its west facade, constructed as a series of pointed gables decorated with crockets and a mixture of blind and open tracery
Tracery
In architecture, Tracery is the stonework elements that support the glass in a Gothic window. The term probably derives from the 'tracing floors' on which the complex patterns of late Gothic windows were laid out.-Plate tracery:...
, interspersed with narrow pinnacles. Unlike earlier Gothic west facades, with their clear three-part horizontal and vertical divisions, Libergier's design was more screen-like (indeed it may have been inspired by earlier choir screens) and on a far more human scale than the cavernous doorways of Reims Cathedral
Reims Cathedral
Notre-Dame de Reims is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Reims, where the kings of France were once crowned. It replaces an older church, destroyed by a fire in 1211, which was built on the site of the basilica where Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, in AD 496. That original...
. Several key elements of the St Nicaise facade were soon taken up by other architects and can be recognised, for example, in the treatment of the North transept
Transept
For the periodical go to The Transept.A transept is a transverse section, of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In Christian churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform building in Romanesque and Gothic Christian church architecture...
portal of Notre Dame de Paris
Notre Dame de Paris
Notre Dame de Paris , also known as Notre Dame Cathedral, is a Gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra of...
and around the roof line of the Sainte Chapelle.
General Characteristics of Rayonnant Architecture
Whilst all phases of Gothic architectureGothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
were concerned to some degree with levels of illumination and the appearance of structural lightness, Rayonnant takes this to the extreme. More of the wall surface than ever before was pierced by windows (see for example the Sainte-Chapelle
Sainte-Chapelle
La Sainte-Chapelle is the only surviving building of the Capetian royal palace on the Île de la Cité in the heart of Paris, France. It was commissioned by King Louis IX of France to house his collection of Passion Relics, including the Crown of Thorns - one of the most important relics in medieval...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
) and buildings were often given lace-like tracery screens on the exterior to hide the bulk of load bearing wall elements and buttresses (such as at Strasbourg Cathedral
Strasbourg Cathedral
Strasbourg Cathedral or the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Strasbourg, France. Although considerable parts of it are still in Romanesque architecture, it is widely consideredSusan Bernstein: , The Johns Hopkins University Press to be among the finest...
or the Church of St Urbain in Troyes
Troyes
Troyes is a commune and the capital of the Aube department in north-central France. It is located on the Seine river about southeast of Paris. Many half-timbered houses survive in the old town...
).
Grisaille
Grisaille is a term for painting executed entirely in monochrome or near-monochrome, usually in shades of grey. It is particularly used in large decorative schemes in imitation of sculpture. Many grisailles in fact include a slightly wider colour range, like the Andrea del Sarto fresco...
glass, which allowed even more light to flood in.
Although changes in window design are the most oft-cited feature of the Rayonnant style, they were actually just one part of a more fundamental aesthetic shift. The key precursor was a change in the construction of window tracery
Tracery
In architecture, Tracery is the stonework elements that support the glass in a Gothic window. The term probably derives from the 'tracing floors' on which the complex patterns of late Gothic windows were laid out.-Plate tracery:...
; the replacement of old-fashioned plate-tracery (in which the window openings look as if they have been punched out of a flat stone plate) with the more delicate bar-tracery (in which the stone elements separating the glazing panels within a window are constructed out of narrow carved mouldings, with rounded inner and outer profiles). Bar-tracery probably made its first appearance in the clerestory windows at Reims Cathedral
Reims Cathedral
Notre-Dame de Reims is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Reims, where the kings of France were once crowned. It replaces an older church, destroyed by a fire in 1211, which was built on the site of the basilica where Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, in AD 496. That original...
and quickly spread across Europe. As well as being a more effective and flexible way of constructing windows, bar tracery also paved the way for the development of blind tracery (decorating an otherwise blank wall) and of open tracery, typically all using the same decorative motifs as the adjoining windows.
The final architectural innovation that emerged as part of the Rayonnant style in France was the use of glazed triforia. Traditionally, the triforium
Triforium
A triforium is a shallow arched gallery within the thickness of inner wall, which stands above the nave of a church or cathedral. It may occur at the level of the clerestory windows, or it may be located as a separate level below the clerestory. It may itself have an outer wall of glass rather than...
of an Early or High Gothic cathedral was a dark horizontal band, usually housing a narrow passageway, that separated the top of the arcade from the clerestory. Although it made the interior darker, it was a necessary feature to accommodate the sloping lean-to roofs over the side aisles and chapels. The Rayonnant solution to this, as employed to brilliant effect in the 1230s nave of the Abbey Church of St Denis, was to use double-pitched roofs over the aisles, with hidden gutters to drain off the rain-water. This meant the outer wall of the triforioum passage could now be glazed, and the inner wall reduced to slender bar tracery. Architects also began to emphasise the linkage between triforium and clerestory by extending the central mullions from the windows of the latter in a continuous moulding running from the top of the windows down through the blind tracery of the triforium to the string course at the top of the arcading.
Influences of Rayonnant Architecture
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
by King Henry III
Henry III of England
Henry III was the son and successor of John as King of England, reigning for 56 years from 1216 until his death. His contemporaries knew him as Henry of Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the reign of Æthelred the Unready...
, who had been present at the consecration of Louis IX's Ste Chapelle. The resulting mixture of styles at Westminster (a crucial step in the development of English Decorated Gothic) has been characterised by some art historians as "French architecture with an English accent". Rayonnant was also very influential in the Holy Roman Empire, as evidenced by the cathedrals at Strasbourg, Cologne and Prague. The style even reached as far as Cyprus
Kingdom of Cyprus
The Kingdom of Cyprus was a Crusader kingdom on the island of Cyprus in the high and late Middle Ages, between 1192 and 1489. It was ruled by the French House of Lusignan.-History:...
(a French cultural outpost during the Middle Ages) with the most prominent example being Saint Nicholas Cathedral
Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque
The Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque originally known as the Saint Nicolas Cathedral and later as the Ayasofya Mosque of Magusa, is the largest medieval building in Famagusta, North Cyprus. Built between 1298 and c.1400 it was consecrated as a Christian cathedral in 1328...
in Famagusta
Famagusta
Famagusta is a city on the east coast of Cyprus and is capital of the Famagusta District. It is located east of Nicosia, and possesses the deepest harbour of the island.-Name:...
.
The various decorative elements employed in the Rayonnant style (bar tracery, blind and open tracery, gables and pinnacles) could also be applied on a much smaller scale, both for the micro-architectural fixtures and fittings within a church (tombs, shrines, pulpits, sacrament houses, etc) and also for small portable objects like reliquaries, liturgical equipment, ivory diptychs, etc. This combination of flexibility and portability may have been a key factor in the dissemination of Rayonnant and its various offshoots across Europe in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.
The transition (in France) from Rayonnant to Flamboyant Gothic was gradual and evolutionary in form, marked primarily by a shift towards new tracery patterns based on S-shaped curves (these curves resemble flickering flames, from which the new style got its name). However, amidst the chaos of the Hundred Years War and the various other misfortunes experienced by Europe during the 14th century, relatively little large scale construction occurred and certain elements of the Rayonnant style remained in vogue well in to the next century.
See also
- Gothic ArchitectureGothic architectureGothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
- FlamboyantFlamboyantFlamboyant is the name given to a florid style of late Gothic architecture in vogue in France from the 14th to the early 16th century, a version of which spread to Spain and Portugal during the 15th century; the equivalent stylistic period in English architecture is called the Decorated Style, and...
- French Gothic architectureFrench Gothic architectureFrench Gothic architecture is a style of architecture prevalent in France from 1140 until about 1500.-Sequence of Gothic styles: France:The designations of styles in French Gothic architecture are as follows:* Early Gothic* High Gothic...
- High Gothic
- Cologne cathedralCologne CathedralCologne Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church in Cologne, Germany. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and the administration of the Archdiocese of Cologne. It is renowned monument of German Catholicism and Gothic architecture and is a World Heritage Site...
- Strasbourg cathedralStrasbourg CathedralStrasbourg Cathedral or the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Strasbourg, France. Although considerable parts of it are still in Romanesque architecture, it is widely consideredSusan Bernstein: , The Johns Hopkins University Press to be among the finest...
- Reims cathedralReims CathedralNotre-Dame de Reims is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Reims, where the kings of France were once crowned. It replaces an older church, destroyed by a fire in 1211, which was built on the site of the basilica where Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, in AD 496. That original...
External links
- Rayonnant Gothic gallery in FlickrFlickrFlickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...