In their plans and in the disposition of their internal spaces and 12th-century Gothic cathedrals adhered largely to Romanesque precedent. But in a number of churches begun towards the end of the century, of which the most important was Chartres Cathedral, the middle storey (the gallery or "tribune") was omitted to make room for high arcades and clerestory, separated only by a low triforium (a passage along the wall). The immense enlargement of the clerestory windows necessitated extra support to resist the thrust of the high vaults and this was provided by flying buttresses, which henceforth became a feature of French cathedral design. Externally, flying buttresses effaced the simple contours of the early Gothic churches and substituted the complex, restless silhouette now regarded as characteristically Gothic. The grandeur and simplicity of the interior at Chartres was enhanced by the plain quadripartite rib-vaulting, supported by piers consisting of a column with four attached shafts, thereby bringing the vertical lines of the vault shafts down to the ground.

 

Chartres, like St Denis 50 years earlier, became the prototype of a whole series of northern French cathedrals (Figure 5). Reims, begun in 1210, followed Chartres closely but made an important advance in the window design. Instead of groups of three openings, two pointed and one circular, that made up the Chartres clerestory, the Reins mason treated all windows as one unit, but with subdivisions built up as independent series. This innovation, known as "bar tracery" or simply "tracery", was taken up by other masons and became an enduring characteristic of Gothic architecture.

 

European developments

In the reign of Philip II Augustus (1165–1223), France was established as the leading power in Western Europe and in the reign of his grandson Louis IX (1215–1270) it became the arbiter of European taste. As a result, there are major churches outside France, such as Leon Cathedral in Castile (begun c. 1250) and Cologne Cathedral (begun 1248), that are practically indistinguishable from French work. The same cannot be said of Westminster Abbey (begun 1245), even though it has more French features than any other thirteenth-century English church.

 

Master masons

Unfortunately, little is known of the organization of 13th-century masons because of the scarcity of contemporary documents. But it seems clear that master masons performed much the same role as architects in later periods although, unlike architects, they were promoted from the ranks of the working masons and not trained purely as designers (Figure 8). Master masons were generally well paid and often the owners of extensive property. The working masons were divided into "cutters", who carved the architectural components, and "setters" who actually put up the building. Figure sculpture was usually the province of highly skilled specialists.

 

Figure 8. Hugues Libergier was master mason of the important church of St Nicaise in Reims which was destroyed in the French Revolution. He appears holding a model of his church with his square and dividers by his feet. His dress is indicative of the professional status of the masons in this period. The Dominican friar Nicholas de Biard compared bishops with master masons who, he said, gave orders to others wearing gloves and holding a measuring rod and receiving higher pay although they themselves never set their hands to the work. Often master masons were commemorated by inscriptions placed in "their" buildings by patrons.

 

The masons' tools were extremely simple. Stone was given various degrees of finish by using finer or coarser chisels. Simple lifting tackle was used and a primitive wooden crane remained in position at Cologne Cathedral until the building was finished in the nineteenth century. The vast front of Cologne was completed then with the aid of the original designs on parchment, which were probably made as presentation drawings for the approval of the design by the cathedral authorities. Working drawings were usually drawn full-size on boards or on a plaster "tracing floor" in the masons' lodge. A surviving example of such a floor at York has many layers of partly erased drawings underneath the most recent set, which is late fourteenth century in design.

 

Decorative features

Stained glass remained the principal form of internal decoration, but by about 1250 the deep blues and reds of the early thirteenth century gave way to a wider and less predictable range of color.

 

Figure 9. The Reliquary of Our Lady at Tournai Cathedral has been attributed to Nicholas of Verdun who finished the Klosterneuburg altarpiece in 1181. The figures have simple, fluid draperies anticipating those of some of the stone sculptures at Reims. The reliefs show the Annuniation, the visitation and the Nativity. More important shrines like St Thomas a Becket's at Canterbury had the same house-like shape but stood on tall stone bases.

 

Thirteenth-century sculpted portals retained the basic twelfth-century format but, like the cathedrals they adorned, were much larger than those of the preceding century. There was an increased emphasis on the Virgin and even in Last Judgement scenes she and St John appear interceding with Christ on behalf of mankind. A certain humanizing of religious subject-matter was achieved in the opening decades of the century by the increasing depiction of character types. By about 1250 this process had gone further and figures such as that of Joseph on the west front of Reims were endowed with the worldly grace that was to characterize much courtly art of the succeeding century.

 

Figure 10. The sole surviving large exterior sculpture at Notre Dame, Paris, this Virgin stands on the Trumeau or central pillar of the north transept portal. Her pose, with the weight on the left leg, serves to draw attention to the infant Christ on her arm and is accentuated by pointed, hanging folds. Her air of mannered refinement and swaying posture became typical of 14th-century sculpture this figure was originally colored.