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RENAISSANCE GOTHIC: PICTURES OF GEOMETRY AND NARRATIVES OF ORNAMENT
Author(s) -
KAVALER ETHAN MATT
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8365.2006.00491.x
Subject(s) - inscribed figure , narrative , art , the renaissance , modernism (music) , ideal (ethics) , mode (computer interface) , visual arts , reading (process) , italian renaissance , geometry , literature , art history , philosophy , mathematics , linguistics , computer science , epistemology , operating system
The profuse Gothic ornament of the early sixteenth century has often been judged typical of Gothic decline, in accordance with the long‐standing dictates of modernism. Yet ornament offered a means of refurbishing this traditional mode, which was then being challenged by alternative Italian practice. In central Europe especially, architects inscribed conspicuous geometrical patterns on the interior of their churches – on elegantly figured vaults and on the balustrades to galleries and ecclesiastical furnishings. Framed and isolated for regard, these were pictures of geometry that could be received as utterances in that ideal mathematical language of divine conception and creation. Furthermore, designers often arranged geometrical shapes in sequences that invited a narrative reading, imbuing the forms with a sense of direction and purpose. Late Gothic ornament thus provided a commentary on religious authority and mediated the experience of sacred structures.