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Gothic art was a style of medieval art that developed in Northern France out of Romanesque art in the 12th century, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, and much of Northern Europe, Southern Europe and Central Europe, never quite effacing more classical styles in Italy. In the late 14th century, the sophisticated court style of International Gothic developed, which continued to evolve until the late 15th century. In many areas, especially Germany, Late Gothic art continued well into the 16th century, before being subsumed into Renaissance art. Primary media in the Gothic period included sculpture, panel painting, stained glass, fresco and illuminated manuscripts. The easily recognisable shifts in architecture from Romanesque to Gothic, and Gothic to Renaissance styles, are typically used to define the periods in art in all media, although in many ways figurative art developed at a different pace.
The earliest Gothic art was monumental sculpture, on the walls of Cathedrals and abbeys. Christian art was often typological in nature (see Medieval allegory), showing the stories of the New Testament and the Old Testament side by side. Saints' lives were often depicted. Images of the Virgin Mary changed from the Byzantine iconic form to a more human and affectionate mother, cuddling her infant, swaying from her hip, and showing the refined manners of a well-born aristocratic courtly lady.
Secular art came into its own during this period with the rise of cities, foundation of universities, increase in trade, the establishment of a money-based economy and the creation of a bourgeois class who could afford to patronise the arts and commission works, resulting in a proliferation of paintings and illuminated manuscripts. Increased literacy and a growing body of secular vernacular literature encouraged the representation of secular themes in art. With the growth of cities, trade were formed and artists were often required to be members of a painters' guild. As a result, because of better record keeping, more artists are known to us by name in this period than any previous; some artists were even so bold as to sign their names.
Wilhelm Worringer's Form in the Gothic (, 1911) traces the psychological roots of the style back into the past at least as far as the Migration period.
Although artists of the Gothic period produced far more secular works than are often known today, generally the survival rate of religious art has been better than for secular equivalents, and a large proportion of the art from the period was religious, whether commissioned by the church or by the laity. Gothic art was often typological in nature, reflecting a belief that the events of the Old Testament pre-figured those of the New Testament, and that this was indeed their main significance. Old and New Testament scenes appeared side-by-side in works like the Speculum Humanae Salvationis of the early-14th century, and in the decoration of churches. The Gothic period coincided with a great resurgence in Marian devotion, in which the visual arts played a major part. Images of the Virgin Mary developed from the Byzantine hieratic types, through the Coronation of the Virgin, to more human and intimate types, and cycles of the Life of the Virgin were very popular. Artists like Giotto ( – 1337), Fra Angelico ( – 1455) and Pietro Lorenzetti ( – 1348) in Italy, and Early Netherlandish painting, all brought realism and more natural humanity to art. Western European artists, and their patrons, became much more confident in innovative iconography, and much more originality developed, although most artists still followed copied formulae.
Iconography was affected by changes in theology, with depictions of the Assumption of Mary gaining ground on the older Death of the Virgin theme, and in devotional practices such as the Devotio Moderna, which produced new treatments of Christ in subjects such as the Man of Sorrows, Pensive Christ and Pietà, which emphasised his human suffering and vulnerability, in a parallel movement to that in depictions of the Virgin. Even in Last Judgements Christ was now usually shown exposing his chest to show the wounds of his Passion. Saints appeared more frequently, and showed saints relevant to the particular church or donor in attendance on a Crucifixion or on an enthroned Virgin and Child, or occupying the central space themselves (this usually for works designed for side-chapels). During the Gothic period many ancient iconographical features that originated in New Testament apocrypha like the midwives at the Nativity were gradually eliminated under clerical pressure, though others had become too well-established, and were considered harmless. Émile Mâle, The Gothic Image, Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century, pp. 165–8, English trans of 3rd edn, 1913, Collins, London (and many other editions) — a classic work on French Gothic church art.
The "Gothic" qualifier for this art movement was first used in Raphael's letter to Pope Leo X and was subsequently popularised by the Italian artist and writer Giorgio Vasari, who used it as early as 1530, calling Gothic art a "monstrous and barbarous" "disorder". The art of the sublime: principles of Christian art and architecture by Roger Homan p. 70 [1] Raphael claimed that the pointed arches of northern architecture were an echo of the primitive huts the Germanic forest dwellers formed by bending trees together – a myth which would resurface much later in a more positive sense in the writings of the German Romanticism movement. "Gothic art" was strongly criticised by French authors such as Boileau, La Bruyère, Rousseau, before becoming a recognised form of art, and the wording becoming fixed. Molière would famously comment on Gothic:
The besotted taste of Gothic monuments, These odious monsters of ignorant centuries, Which the torrents of barbary spewed forth.
In its beginning, Gothic art was initially called "French work" ( Opus Francigenum), thus attesting to the priority of France in the creation of this style.
During the late 13th century, scribes began to create prayer books for the laity, often known as books of hours due to their use at prescribed times of the day. Among the earliest is an example by William de Brailes that seems to have been written for an unknown laywoman living in a North Hinksey near Oxford in about 1240. Nobility frequently purchased such texts, paying handsomely for decorative illustrations; among the most well-known creators of these is Jean Pucelle, whose Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux was commissioned by King Charles IV as a gift for his queen, Jeanne d'Évreux.Stokstad (2005), 542. Elements of the French Gothic present in such works include the use of decorative page framing reminiscent of the architecture of the time with elongated and detailed figures. The use of spatial indicators such as building elements and natural features such as trees and clouds also denote the French Gothic style of illumination.
From the middle of the 14th century, with both text and images cut as woodcut seem to have been affordable by priest in the Low Countries, where they were most popular. By the end of the century, printed books with illustrations, still mostly on religious subjects, were rapidly becoming accessible to the prosperous middle class, as were of fairly high quality by like Israhel van Meckenem and Master E. S. In the 15th century, the introduction of cheap prints, mostly in woodcut, made it possible even for peasants to have devotional images at home. These images, tiny at the bottom of the market, often crudely coloured, were sold in thousands but are now extremely rare, most having been pasted to walls.
The statues on the Western (Royal) Portal at Chartres Cathedral () show an elegant but exaggerated columnar elongation, but those on the south transept portal, from 1215–20, show a more naturalistic style and increasing detachment from the wall behind, and some awareness of the classical tradition. These trends were continued in the west portal at Reims Cathedral of a few years later, where the figures are almost in the round, as became usual as Gothic spread across Europe.Honour and Fleming, 297–300; Henderson, 55, 82–84 Bamberg Cathedral has perhaps the largest assemblage of 13th century sculpture, culminating in 1240 with the Bamberg Rider, the first life-size equestrian statue in Western art since the 6th century.
"In Italy the Gospel of Gothic was preached from pulpits not from tympana, and the unit of the sculptor's thinking was an autonomous, self-consistent work of art" (John Pope-Hennessy).Pope-Hennessy, 11 Nicola Pisano (1258–78) and his son Giovanni Pisano developed a style that is often called Proto-Renaissance, with unmistakable influence from Roman sarcophagi and sophisticated and crowded compositions, including a sympathetic handling of nudity, in relief panels on their pulpit of Siena Cathedral (1265–68), Pulpit in the Pisa Baptistery, the Fontana Maggiore in Perugia, and Giovanni's pulpit in Pistoia of 1301.Olson, 11–24; Honour and Fleming, 304; Henderson, 41
Another revival of classical style is seen in the International Gothic work of Claus Sluter and his followers in Burgundy and Flanders around 1400.Snyder, 65–69 Late Gothic sculpture continued in the North, with a fashion for very large, wooden, sculpted altarpieces with increasingly virtuoso carving and large numbers agitated expressive figures; most surviving examples are in Germany, after much iconoclasm elsewhere. Tilman Riemenschneider, Veit Stoss and others continued the style well into the 16th century, gradually absorbing Italian Renaissance influences.Snyder, 305–311
Life-size tomb effigies in stone or alabaster became popular for the wealthy, and grand multi-level tombs evolved, with the Scaliger Tombs of Verona so large they had to be moved outside the church. By the 15th century there was an industry exporting Nottingham alabaster altar reliefs in groups of panels over much of Europe for economical parishes who could not afford stone retables.[3]V&A Museum feature on the Nottingham alabaster Swansea Altarpiece
File:Chartres cathedral 023 martyrs S TTaylor.JPG|South portal of Chartres Cathedral (–20).
File:Reims6.jpg|West portal at Reims Cathedral, Annunciation group.
File:Pisa.Baptistery.pulpit02.jpg|Nicola Pisano, Nativity and Adoration of the Magi from the pulpit in the Pisa Baptistery, 1260.
Image:Dijon mosesbrunnen4.jpg|Claus Sluter, David and a prophet from the Well of Moses.
File:Holy Thorn Reliquary base.jpg|Base of the Holy Thorn Reliquary, French (Paris), 1390s, a Resurrection of the Dead in gold, enamel and gems.
Image:Ulm-Muenster-SchmerzensMann-061104.jpg|Man of Sorrows on the main portal of Ulm Münster by Hans Multscher, 1429.
File:English - Resurrection - Walters 27308.jpg|Panelled altarpiece section with Resurrection of Christ, English Nottingham alabaster, 1450–90, with remains of colour.
Image:France Strasbourg Magi.jpg|Later Gothic depiction of the Adoration of the Magi from Strasbourg Cathedral.
File:Rothenburg ob der Tauber 2011 St Jakob 002.JPG|Detail of the Last Supper from Tilman Riemenschneider's Altar of the Holy Blood, 1501–05, carved limewood, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Bavaria.
Souvenirs of pilgrimages to shrines, such as clay or lead pilgrim badge, medals and ampullae stamped with images were also popular and cheap. Their secular equivalent, the livery badge, showed signs of feudal and political loyalty or alliance that came to be regarded as a social menace in England under bastard feudalism. The cheaper forms were sometimes given away free, as with the 13,000 badges ordered in 1483 by King Richard III of England in fustian cloth with his emblem of a white boar for the investiture of his son Edward as Prince of Wales,Cherry (2003), 204 a huge number given the population at the time. The Dunstable Swan Jewel, modelled fully in the round in enamelled gold, is a far more exclusive version, that would have been given to someone very close or important to the donor.
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