Review of Irish Gothic architecture: construction, decay and reinvention, Roger Stalley (ed) (original) (raw)
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AN ANALYSIS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE
That the Anglo-Norman architects raised their style to the very highest degree of perfection to which it was capable of attaining, is most evidently shown by many of their works which yet remain : still, intrinsically excellent as it became, there was in its very essence that which necessarily involved its suppression. It appears, indeed, true that Architecture shares in the general instability of things terrestrial : for by the working, as it would seem, of some latent yet constraining law, one style, or one distinctive form of a style, no sooner arrives at full maturity, than it is gradually superseded by some other form or style, differing in a greater or less degree, yet still essentially differing. * The tooth-ornament also appears on the exterior in some lancet-windows, as in the triplet in Tinwell Church, Rutlandshire (see Section I. Early English, Plate 20) ; and in Warmington Church, Northants. t Professor Willis derives the idea of a foliated arch from a compound archway, of which the first order is a simple, and the second a foiled arch.
2018
According to an accepted version of history, in the middle of the XII century, for some reason , the construction style in Northern Europe changed suddenly from Romanesque to Gothic, besides the differences in style it was a revolution in the construction techniques. We propose here a different interpretation: that Gothic architecture originated in Holy Land, and that it had in Cyprus an important experimentation phase before it was imported to Northern Europe. After that Salah Din in 1187 recon-quered the city of Jerusalem, a number of Christians were allowed to leave the city by paying a ransom. A number variable between 30.000 and 6.000 according to different sources, fled from Jerusalem to Acri, Tripoli and Cyprus: it is not a case that two years later, the island passed under the authority of the Templars, and after one more year under the lordship of Guy de Lusignan, former king of Jerusalem. Both these groups, the Templars and the Lusignans had moved to Cyprus after the loss of Jerusalem, in what should be considered a migration. After this event, the architectural prevalent style in Cyprus shifted gradually from middle Byzantine to Gothic. When these groups arrived to Cyprus, they brought to the island a new architectural style, named by historians the Gothic style. Actually, what they could bring with them was the architectural knowledge as it was in Holy Land, following the encounter of Northern carpenters coming from the elastic cultural area, with the local Islamic masons and engineers belonging to a plastic cultural area. The Northern builders used to build with wooden scaffoldings for the construction of arches and vaults as we can see in the Romanesque architecture, and after the first crusade (1099), had to operate in Jerusalem, a different environment where wood was expensive and difficult to find. In continuity with the local building knowledge, they developed a new way of building based essentially on ashlar and masonry without using wooden scaffoldings, importing some models and elements of former Islamic architecture. We are going to illustrate some very early Holy Land buildings featuring the typical characters of the Gothic style: the polylobate pilaster, the lancet arch, the ambulatory choir, the flying buttresses, the groin vault and the rib system.
Style over substance: architectural fashion and identity building in medieval Ireland
The March in the Islands of the Medieval West, 2012
This article re-examines the art and architecture of twelfth-century Ireland to argue that the style term 'Romanesque' is aptly applied to such works. Cormac's Chapel at Cashel is placed within the context of literary references to the Holy Roman Emperors, and the significance of its twin towered plan is therefore highlighted. Toirdelbach Ua Conchobair's patronage of crosses, both stone and metal, and his enshrining of a fragment of the True Cross in the Cross of Cong, may also have been intended to bear imperial symbolism. Finally, two capitals from the church of Sts Peter and Paul at Armagh show direct stylistic reference to Rome. Thus twelfth-century Irish art can be shown to look both to Rome, and, in some senses, to the Holy Roman Empire; this makes it at one culturally, if not aesthetically, with other Romanesque artwork across western Europe.