Gothic art is the art of medieval Europe from the middle of the twelfth century to about 1500. It is best known through its cathedrals, with pointed arches, high vaults and walls opened into stained glass, but it also covers carved portals, painted altarpieces and illuminated books. Its beginning is usually placed at Saint-Denis, near Paris, where Abbot Suger dedicated a new choir in 1144.
From France the style spread to England, Germany, Spain and Italy, lasting longest in the north, and it moved from stone into glass, painted wood and the pages of books. Its best-known examples are Chartres Cathedral, the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris and, in painting, the Wilton Diptych in London.
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The word Gothic now suggests gloom: dark stone, gargoyles, haunted castles. The man who started the style wanted the opposite. Suger described his new choir as a space "which the new light pervades," and on the abbey's gilded doors he had a verse inscribed saying that "the dull mind rises to the truth through material things."
For Suger, light pouring through colored glass was a way of lifting the mind toward God. The whole style grew out of that wish for more light, which makes its modern reputation for darkness all the more surprising.
Nobody in the Middle Ages called it Gothic. The name came centuries later, from Italian writers of the Renaissance who meant it as an insult, and it pointed at a people, the Goths, who had nothing to do with any of it.
What You'll Discover
The insult hiding in the word Gothic.
An abbot who wanted his church full of light.
The trick that turned stone walls into windows.
What survived the Chartres fire of 1194.
An angel whose words cross a sky of gold.
How a novel darkened the word Gothic.