![]() From 1100 onward, architects experimented with innovations that, once properly combined, allowed the dissolution of the wall and a fluid arrangement of space. ![]() Their walls are necessarily thick to counter the outward thrust of the vault, and they allow only small windows. Gothic architecture is the result of an engineering challenge: how to span in stone ever-wider surfaces from ever-greater heights? While most early medieval churches were covered with timber ceilings, many Romanesque buildings have either stone barrel vaults (i.e., semi-circular) or groin vaults (i.e., bays of barrel vaults crossing at a right angle). Long since rid of derogatory connotations, the label is now used to characterize an art form based on the pointed arch, which emerged around Paris in the middle of the twelfth century, was practiced throughout Europe, and lingered in some regions well into the sixteenth century. Vasari implied that this architecture was debased, especially compared to that of his own time, which had revived the forms of classical antiquity. “Then arose new architects who after the manner of their barbarous nations erected buildings in that style which we call Gothic ( dei Gotthi).” Florentine historiographer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) was the first to label the architecture of preceding centuries “Gothic,” in reference to the Nordic tribes that overran the Roman empire in the sixth century.
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