Windows in Church Architecture - Romanesque and Gothic

Romanesque and Gothic

Up to the twelfth century the windows of the Romesque churches had small openings for light, a sloping intrados, and an inclined sill. Originally without decoration, they later received a framework, that is, they were surrounded by a border of slender shafts as by a frame. In the further development these round shafts received small bases and capitals, the intrados was divided into rectangular intervals in which small columns were set. Gothic art adopted this framework, merely changing the round arch into a pointed one, and later replacing the rectangular intervals of the intrados by flutings. As the style grew the small capitals of the round shafts were abandoned and later the shafts themselves, by which the style returned to the simple framework. The late Gothic ceased to use even the framework and employed the sloping intrados alone, without further ornament. Naturally there were innumerable exceptions to the development sketched here only in its general features. In Romanesque art the sills had originally only a slight inclination. This gradually became greater until it became more than a right angle. Characteristic of the Romanesque style is the grouping together of two to four windows, the so-called clustered window. Above the window the flat surface of the arch remained without ornamentation or was pierced by small round windows. Romanesque art used, in addition to windows enclosed by the round arch, others surrounded by the trefoil or fan-arch, and even openings for light entirely Baroque in design with arbitrarily curved arches. In the Gothic period the windows were longer and broader, in a number of cathedrals they almost replace the walls. Although the clustered window with three openings did not entirely disappear, yet it was more customary to use two narrow windows combined by a common shaft and a common pointed arch above them. The shafts grew constantly more slender and a circular arch was introduced under the pointed arch. This led in the course of time to the appearance of tracery which was so largely used in window ornamentation in the Gothic period that it became almost the most important consideration in the construction of windows. Tracery is formed by setting together separate parts of a circle called foils; their points of contact are named cusps. By means of tracery the pointed arches of the windows were constantly filled with new forms and devices, simple in the early Gothic, artificial and confused the more the style developed, until finally in the late Gothic or Flamboyant style the wavy tracery was used which no longer consisted of circles and segments of circles but assumed forms comparable to flames, a style particularly in vogue in England and France. Towards the end of the Gothic period greater sobriety of form came into use and tracery began to decline. The elaboration undergone by the tracery was also shared by the shafts of the windows and intrados. Undivided at first they gradually received richer contours and were separated into main and subordinate pillars. The earliest tracery of which the date is known is that still existing in the choir chapels of the Reims Cathedral (1211).