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Medieval Europe + Byzantine
Course: Medieval Europe + Byzantine > Unit 10
Lesson 2: Gothic art in England- Wilton Diptych
- Wilton Diptych (quiz)
- Southwell Minster
- Salisbury Cathedral
- Salisbury Cathedral
- Lincoln Cathedral
- Wells Cathedral
- Gloucester Cathedral
- Four styles of English medieval architecture at Ely Cathedral
- The Chapter House of York Minster
- Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey
- Matthew Paris’s itinerary maps from London to Palestine
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Wells Cathedral
Wells Cathedral, Wells, England, begun c. 1175 Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris.
Want to join the conversation?
- at, there are some strings attached to the stone decorative arches on the facade of the building, are they of any structural importance? 6:50(2 votes)
- From the author:They are not structural. They looked to me like abandoned telephone lines from decades ago.(3 votes)
- I have a postcard (circa 1935) of the South Aisle of Wells Cathedral that shows what appears to be caskets on the left side of the picture. Are there actually people entombed inside the cathedral or is this also just architectural?(1 vote)
- From the author:Real tombs, with bodies, are very common in European cathedrals.(4 votes)
- There is a recurring theme in this unit, as in at, to point out the presence of small passageways in Gothic cathedral clerestories, which exist (at least in part) to emphasize the breadth of the building's walls. I'd bet the passageways are also useful during periods of construction and restoration. Did/do the passageways have additional, practical purpose in church operations or function? 3:26(2 votes)
- I would assume that Wells Cathedral, among other gothic cathedrals, has undergone renovations, repairs and restoration. Why is the repainting of the exterior figures and other surface elements not included when these structures undergo these restorations?(1 vote)
- Sometimes they are. For example, our recent video on Salisbury Cathedral shows some sculptures on the west façade that were added in the 19th century.(3 votes)
- What makes a cathedral in the Gothic style(1 vote)
- There are a number of considerations. Time and place as well as the architectural forms it used and of course ideas about how the heavenly could be translated into stone.(2 votes)
- Does any one know if all the stained glass was saved from notre dame cathedral(1 vote)
Video transcript
(gentle piano music) - [Steven] We're in
the small town of Wells in South West England, looking at the Cathedral of St. Andrew, more commonly known as Wells Cathedral. - [Beth] And for many people
the most spectacular part of Wells Cathedral is the west front. - [Steven] It's extremely
unusual for an English cathedral to have this much figural sculpture. - [Beth] We're used to
having a large amount of figural sculpture on the facade of the French Gothic churches. In the jambs, in the trumeau, in the tympanum, in the archivolts. But here the doorways are quite small and that is not the main
location for the sculpture. Sculpture occupies these canopied
niches across the facade. - [Steven] The result
is this broad flat plane with lots of sculptures interrupted by six deeply
protruding buttresses that have lots of sculptural
niches on either side. - [Beth] And in fact
the sculpture continues around the north and south
sides of the building. This broad screen on the west facade is very typical of
English Gothic churches. But it's the amount of
sculpture that's unusual. - [Steven] And it really is broad. In fact it's approximately
twice as wide as it is tall if you don't count the towers. - [Beth] In many ways this
resembles a choir screen. Now a choir screen separated
the east and west ends of the church and acted as a boundary but also as a backdrop
for liturgical events. Events relating to the
services in the church. - [Steven] We think that this functioned as a decorative and instructive backdrop for important feast days
especially around Easter. - [Beth] Palm Sunday especially. There was a procession that took place and the church would've
been decorated with banners. We also have to remember that this facade was brightly painted. Parts of it were engilded
and the best part there was music coming from
the church facade itself. - [Steven] If you look very closely the four lower quatrefoils on either side of where the sculpture would've been there are holes and through those holes singers' voices could be heard. Those singers stood in a hidden
gallery within the building. - [Beth] And there was a
second gallery even higher up where trumpeters played. - [Steven] And so with its
brightly painted facade, with its banners and with its music the church would've come alive. In typically English
fashion it's begun to rain, so let's go inside. We've walked out of the
increasingly heavy rain into the cathedral and into the nave. - [Beth] So we have a typical
three-part Gothic elevation with a nave arcade with pointed arches. - [Steven] And these particular
arches are quite narrow. - [Beth] But they are also deep in that way that English
Gothic architecture is. We have a series of rolled moldings that give us a sense of
the depth of the wall. - [Steven] And then above that one of the most unique characteristics of the nave elevation. That is the gallery. This is a series of framed arches that are openings into a walkway. But here there is such an
emphasis on the rolled molding that the arches have
narrowed to mere slits. And when you look at them obliquely the openings disappear entirely. - [Beth] But we see
that characteristically English interest in decoration. Above those narrow arched
openings we see carvings of foliage, animals and then
heads between the arches. - [Steven] Then we have
corbels from which spring four part ribbed groin vaults. - [Beth] But even in those
corbels we see foliage. - [Steven] And then also very typical of early English Gothic at the clerestory we see
an additional passageway. There's a real effort to again emphasize the thickness of the wall. - [Beth] Because the vault
ribs spring from those corbels and not the compound piers below, when we look at the nave there's not an emphasis on the vertical as much as there is an
emphasis on the horizontal leading us toward the
east end of the church. And this is again
typically English Gothic. - [Steven] And a great sense
of density at the gallery level further disassociates the
nave arcade from the gallery and again from the clerestory. - [Beth] So we have a
sense of three separate horizontal bands and we loose that sense of the vertical segmentation of space that we typically see in
French Gothic churches. - [Steven] But before
we move past the nave we have to address the single most unique, most powerful architectural element within the entire cathedral. What are known as scissor arches. - [Beth] And we find these
at all four entrances to the crossing. - [Steven] Now this was
not originally intended when the church was first laid out. - [Beth] It was added after
when they were building the tower and they realized that the tower was putting such great weight
on the crossing underneath and they needed something else
to help support that weight. - [Steven] Clearly these are structural but they're also absolutely sculptural. They give a sense of
dynamism to the space. - [Beth] The two oculi on either side of each of these strainer
arches look like eyes so as I look toward the east end I feel like I'm being peered back at. It's uncanny. - [Steven] The architect found a powerful but poetic solution to
a structural problem. And this is an important reminder that the Gothic was still in its infancy. That this was still very much
a time of experimentation. - [Beth] And we can see clearly
too that this was a church like most Gothic churches
that was built in stages. And as we look through that scissor arch we see these lovely fan vaults that date to the later
perpendicular period. - [Steven] This particular
church was built in several campaigns over three centuries and it's a wonderful
patchwork of different styles. - [Beth] What I notice when
I look up at the capitals is that sometimes I see
foliage but often also figures and sometimes quite amusing ones. But one of the most famous figures seems to be suffering from a toothache. - [Steven] Art historians
have likened this to illuminated manuscripts
where scribes would sometimes draw little vignette in the
margins that were fanciful and had little to do with
the main body of text. We've walked up this
gloriously beautiful set of thirteen century stairs that were worn by generations of men who would come to a large
room known as a chapter house for a morning meeting. - [Beth] And what we see here is typically English decorated Gothic. Especially when we look at the vaulting. - [Steven] The center
shaft radiates upward almost like a palm with
its spreading fronds. And look at those ribs. There are more than 30 that
radiate from the central pier and they rise delicately up until they reach a perpendicular rib and at every intersection
there's this beautiful globe-like boss that is deeply undercut with a wide variety of types of foliage. - [Beth] And in typically Gothic fashion we see a very tall and wide clerestory allowing a lot of light
into this very small room and tracery windows. - [Steven] The large arch over the doorway has emphasized its width, its thickness through three courses of stone. - [Beth] And the stone is
varied because of the use of that darker purbeck
marble so you have this sense of the alternation of light and dark as you look along the bottom arcade. And perhaps the most fun
part of the chapter house is in a row of faces right
above the capitals of the arcade and some art historians
think these may be images of the men who attended the meetings here. - [Steven] So whereas most of
Wells is early English Gothic with great experimentation
and with revisions necessary in certain cases such as
the great scissor arches by the time we get to the
building of the chapter house because of its elegance, because of its refinement and because of its
extraordinary engineering, you really have a sense
that these architects understood the principals of the Gothic. The chapter house was
built as a meeting room but it is gloriously decorated and it functions as a kind
of microcosm of the synthesis of use and beauty that we find
in the cathedral as a whole. (gentle piano music)