Gothic Architecture Essay

The Earth as a whole is not comprised of individual civilizations cut off from one another. This being said, influence can be seen all over the world, through many different cultures. As trade and natural movement of people brought artistic or architectural influences to other places, one can recognize an evolution of ideas and adaptation to the tools available in the area. Architectural styles and remnants of these can be seen trickling down from the more modern era of Gothic work all the way back to the Egyptian halls dating back as far as the 1400s BCE. Gothic architecture can be seen clearly in the construction known as the Chartres Cathedral. The structure is in Chartres, France, and was built around 1134. This style of building was highly ornamental, growing in terms of sculpture. The purely architectural skeleton of this era shows little growth, however, from older buildings merely piling or joining pieces together (Morris 9). The staple Gothic features for a Cathedral such as this are the pointed arches, stained glass windows, a large rose window with stone tracery, heavily decorated portals, and the asymmetrical towers. Created from massive amounts of stone, there is symbolism in architecture

This can be seen in the Durham Cathedral of 1080-1106 in England. Unlike Gothic work, this is characterized mostly by round arches, less surface decoration, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses. The common use of archways only evolved into pointed rather than rounded between the two periods (Mann 81). There is even a rose window, which is a later Gothic addition to the building. There is still elaborate carved decoration, but it originally would have been painted. Much like Gothic, the decoration inside and outside is very detailed. Much of the Romanesque period carvings are less sculptural, and more pattern based, similar to Islamic work (Stokstad