Central Europe, the late Gothic

German political horizons had long encompassed England, if only as a counterweight to France, and when Parler arrived in Prague in 1356 Edward III's victories over the French had raised English prestige in Europe to its highest level during the Middle Ages.

Nevertheless, it has to be emphasized that Parler's borrowings from the Decorated style were integrated into a design which is not Engl

ish either in its basic premises or its detailed handling, for in the late Middle Ages no single nation could exercise cultural leadership in Europe in the way that France liad done during the 13th century.

How Parler was able to learn about English Decorated is nof known.

A study tour during apprenticeship is possible, for these are documented in late medieval Germany, but it may be that some kind of agreement existed which enabled architectural information in the guise of drawings to circulate among the main cathedral lodges.

Around 1350 the Strasbourg lodge obtained plans of the choirs of Notre-Dame in Paris and Orleans Cathedral, but it is not known how or by what route they came.

The influence of Parler's net vaults and complex tracery endured in Central Europe as long as Gothic architecture itself, and by around 1500 the Parler family had become known as the 'Junckherrn' (squires) of Prague and had acquired the mythical status of founders of German masonic practice. Yet the Prague choir did not start a spate of cathedral building. At Augsburg a grand new Rayonnant chevet begun after the bishop visited Prague in 1354 was finished off lamely in the late 14th century. At the minster of Freiburg-im-Breisgau, the main town in the Black Forest region, a cathedral-like choir was begun in 1354 by Peter Parlor's brofher Johann, but a quarrel between the town and the ruler of the surrounding area soon brought work to a standstill.

Other institutions which might have been expected to build a great church were content with much simpler schemes. A case in point is Aachen Minster, where the new choir added after the formal designation of the dimivh as the coronation place of future German kings in 1356 was essentially an enlarged version of the Sainte-Chapelle. That it was not a German Reims must have been partly due to the wish to preserve Charlemagne's venerable 9th-century Palatine Chapel, but it also reflects the lesser importance of the imperial office in the late Middle Ages compared to what it had been until 1250.

On the relatively rare occasions when major church building was patornized by the territorial princes, the real rulers of late medieval Germany, the outcome was invariably a hall church.

The best of 15th-century Germany's great church buildings are the nave of the Benedictine abbey church of SS. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, rebuilt 1494-1500 following a tire, and the continuation of the Freiburg choir from 1471 by Hans Niesenberger.

Freiburg provides an exemplar of many of the stylistic traits of the latest phase of German Gofhic, although it was not a building of the seminal importance of Prague. As in the major hall churches, the emphasis is firmly on rich and complex vaulting. The central vessel has a net vault which must be numbered among the vast progeny of the high vault at Prague, although its close and even mesh of ribs is typical of late 15th- and 16th-century designs.

The ambulatory vault is quite different and exemplifies the restless, organic quality of much 15th-ceimiry German Gofhic in its sprawling and irregular-looking rib patterns, its tangled and capital-less springings, its limited use of skeletal ribs and its overshof rib junctions suggestive of branches lashed together.

This last element is used inconspicuously in the high vault at Prague, but at Freiburg and the manу ofher late 15th-century churches where it is echoed in the cusping of the window tracery it almost becomes the leimotiv of the interior.

The ultimate development of the idea, the naturalistic rendering of untrimmed branches, did not impinge on great church architecture as such, although it can be seen on fittings and ancillary structures, for example the nave pulpit and the chapel of St Lawrence at Strasbourg. It is not at all clear what specific meanings, if any, were attached to this quasi-vegetal strain of Gofhic.

Conclusion

It seems legitimate to associate the matter-of-fact directness of the normative type, the hall church, with the practical tenor of town life, although increasingly often during the 14th century the hall format was adopted by majoi ecclesiastical corporations whose counterparts elsewliere in Northern Europe would automatically have built great churches.

Such enormous production of church buildings in Central Europe during the late Middle Ages was fuelled chiefly by the competitive civic pride of the region's burgeoning towns, and as a result the main focus of creative effort was the urban parish church rather than the cathedral or monastic church.

The one l4th-century church in Central Europe which adopted the French great church system more or less complete is Prague Cathedral. This stylistic allegiance can be ascribed without hesitation to the patrons, the Luxemburg dynasty of Bohemian kings, allies of the French royal house in family, politics and culture.

The earliest German rib vaults without webs are those in the west tower at Freiburg Minster and the 'Tonsur' chapel in the cloister at Magdeburg Cathedral, both of c. 1310-30.

The best of 15th-century Germany's great church buildings are the nave of the Benedictine abbey church of SS. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, rebuilt 1494-1500 following a tire, and the continuation of the Freiburg choir from 1471 by Hans Niesenberger.

Literature

1. Cristopher Wilson. The Gothic Cathedral.

 Скачать реферат