The basilican plan used in earlier times needed elaboration to accommodate a new liturgy. The essential symbol of the cross was incorporated in the form of transepts, a cross axis (perhaps borrowed from Byzantium) that served to identify the choir (for the monks), as distinct from the nave (for the public). Beyond the choir, in a semicircular apse girded by the ambulatory (a semicircular extension of the aisles), stood the main altar, the focal point of the building. Subaltars, needed for the daily Mass required of many monks, were placed in the transepts and in the ambulatory. At the nave entrance were placed narthexes, vestibules and reception areas for pilgrims. Although many French churches-Saint Savin sur Gartempe (nave 1095-1115), Saint Sernin in Toulouse (circa 1080-1120), and Sainte Foy in Conques (begun 1050)-had barrel-vaulted naves, Saint Philibert in Tournus (950-1120) used transverse arches to support a series of barrel vaults, with windows high in the vertical plane at the ends of the vaults. Ultimately, the groin vault became the preferred solution, because it offered high windows together with a continuous longitudinal crown, as in Sainte Madeleine in V?zelay (1104) and Worms Cathedral (11th century) in Germany. The semicircular arches of the groin vault form a square in plan; thus, the nave consisted of a long series of square bays or segments. The smaller and lower vaults of the aisles were often doubled up, two to each nave bay, to conform to this configuration.
The greatest monastic Romanesque church, Cluny III (1088-1121), did not survive the French Revolution but has been reconstructed in drawings; it was an immense double-aisled church almost 137 m (almost 450 ft) long, with 15 small chapels in transepts and ambulatory. Its design influenced Romanesque and Gothic churches in Bourgogne and beyond. Another important stimulus to French Romanesque was the pilgrimage cult; a convergence of routes led over the western Pyrenees into Spain and thus to Santiago de Compostela, where the pilgrim could venerate the presumed relics of St. James. Along the routes to Spain, certain points were sanctified as pilgrimage stops, which led to the erection of splendid Romanesque churches at Autun (1120-32), Paray-le-Monial (circa 1100), P?rigueux (1120), Conques (1050), Moissac (circa 1120), Clermont-Ferrand (1262), Saint Guilhem le D?sert (1076), and others. See Romanesque Art and Architecture.
Gothic Architecture
At the beginning of the 12th century, Romanesque was transformed into Gothic. Although the change was a response to a growing rationalism in Christian theology, it was also the result of technical developments in vaulting. To build a vault requires first a temporary carpentry structure, called centering, which supports the masonry until the shell has been completed and the mortar has set. Centering for the ordinary groin vault must be for an entire structural unit, or bay, with a resultant heavy structure resting on the floor. About 1100, the builders of Durham Cathedral in England invented a new method. They built two intersecting diagonal arches across the bay, on lighter centering perhaps supported high on the nave walls, and then found ways to fill out the shell resting on secondary centering. This gave a new geometric articulation-the ribbed vault. Ribs did not modify the structural characteristics of the groin vault, but they offered constructional advantage and emphatically changed the vault’s appearance.
Another development was the pointed arch and vault. The main advantage was geometrical. Vaults of various proportions could cover a rectangular or even a trapezoidal bay, so that nave bays could correspond with the narrower aisle bays, and vaulting could proceed around the curved apse without interruption. Also, the nave walls containing clerestory windows could be pushed just as high as the crown of the vault. Soon this clerestory became all window, filled with tracery and stained glass that conferred a new luminosity on the interior.
With these advances, the master builders were encouraged to construct more elegant, higher, and apparently lighter structures. But the vaults had to be kept from spreading outward by restraint imposed near the base of the vaults, now high above the aisle roofs. The solution was another innovation, the flying buttress, a half arch leaning against the vault from the outside, with its base firmly set in a massive pier of its own.
This new style received its most intensive development in the ?le-de-France. The abbey church of Saint Denis (1140-44), the royal mausoleum near Paris, became the first grandiose model. Bishops in prosperous northern cities were then drawn into competition for designers and artisans to outdo other cathedrals. The beginning dates of the major French examples are Laon, 1160; Paris, 1163; Chartres, 1194; Bourges, 1195; Reims, 1210; Amiens, 1220; and Beauvais, 1225. The beginning dates of English Gothic cathedrals are Canterbury, 1174; Lincoln, 1192; York Minster, 1261; and Exeter, 1280. The collapse of the Beauvais choir in 1284, however, indicated that structural limits had been reached. The transverse span of the nave vaults of these cathedrals was in the range of 9 to 15 m (30 to 50 ft), but the rebuilt Beauvais choir attained a height of 47 m (154 ft).
Although the finest medieval architecture was ecclesiastical, secular builders also constructed great buildings in the years 1000 to 1400. The medieval castle is a romantic symbol of feudalism; one of the most impressive and best-preserved examples is the Krak des Chevaliers (1131) in Jordan, built by the Knights Hospitalers at the time of the Crusades.
Military architecture was a defensive response to advances in the technology of warfare; the ability to withstand siege remained important. Fortifications sometimes embraced whole towns; important examples include ?vila in Spain, Aigues-Mortes and Carcassonne in France, Chester in England, and Visby in Sweden.
Urbanization increased on a large scale, brought about by the needs and desires of many groups, including the church and its monasteries, the nobles and kings, the craft guilds, and the merchants and bankers. The planning patterns that developed are quite different from the arbitrary geometry of Roman cities or of Renaissance theorists. Throughout northern Europe, where hardwood remained available until the Industrial Revolution, timber frame construction flourished. In half-timber construction, a quickly erected wood frame was infilled with wattle and daub (twigs and plaster) or brickwork. Monastic barns and municipal covered markets necessitated large braced wooden frames. The descendants of Vikings built the curiously beautiful stave churches in Norwegian valleys. In the Alps whole towns were built of horizontally interlocked wood timbers of square cross section. Brick architecture also flourished in many regions, notably Lombardy, northern Germany, Holland, and Denmark. See Gothic Art and Architecture.
The Architecture of Islam
The Islamic concept of a mosque as a place for ablutions and prayer differs from the idea of a Christian church, and the desert climates in which Islam first became established required protection from sun, wind, and sand. The initial prototype was a simple walled-in rectangle containing a fountain and surrounded with porticoes. A qibla, or wall toward Mecca, had in its center an apse, or mihrab, with a nearby pulpit, or minbar; the shelter at this end consisted of multiple arcades of transverse and lateral rows of columns. Structural elements were the arch and the dome; roofs were flat unless forced upward by vaults, and there were no high windows. The mosque had at least one tower, or minaret, from which the call to prayer was issued five times daily. The same basic plan is followed to this day.
Western and Middle Eastern Islamic Architecture
The Great Mosque at Al Qayrawan in Tunisia was built in AD 670, but its well-preserved state today reflects construction of the period 817-902.
The oldest mosque in Iraq is at Samarra (847-52). It is now a brick ruin, but its curious cone-shaped minaret with outside spiral ramp survives. The Great Mosque at C?rdoba in Spain covers 2.4 hectares (6 acres) and was built in several stages from 786 to 965. It was converted to a Christian cathedral in 1236. Also in Spain is the Alhambra (1354-91) at Granada, one of the most dazzling examples of Islamic palace architecture; its courts and fountains have delighted visitors ever since its construction.
Over the centuries Islamic architecture borrowed extensively from other cultures. Beginning in 1453, the Ottoman Turks ruled from Constantinople. Sultan Suleiman I (the Magnificent) was a patron of arts and architecture. His architect, Sinan, knew the Byzantine traditions, and in his mosques he refined and elaborated on the great 6th-century prototype, Hagia Sophia. Sinan’s masterpieces are the Suleimaniye (begun 1550) in Istanbul and the Selimiye (begun 1569) in Edirne.
Iran is renowned for brick masonry vaulting and for glazed ceramic veneers. The finest examples of Islamic architecture in Iran are found in Esfahan (Isfahan), the former capital. The enormous imperial mosque, the Masjid-i-Jami, represents several construction periods, beginning in the 15th century. Even more richly ornamented is the sumptuous Masjid-i-Shah (1585-1616), built to be part of the royal civic compound of Shah Abbas I.
Islamic Architecture in India
The Mughal peoples, who had embraced Islam, made incursions into India and established an empire there. Mughal architecture was based on Persian traditions, but developed in northwestern India in ways peculiar to that region. The earliest remaining mosque, the Qutb, near Delhi, was begun in 1195. It is impossible to separate Mughal religious architecture from that erected to glorify the Mughal Empire.
The great builders were the emperors of the 16th and 17th centuries. Their most impressive monuments are a succession of imperial tombs. Notable are the superbly architectonic tomb (1564-73) of Humayun in Delhi, the jewel-like Itimad-ud-Daulah (1622-28) in Agra, and the beautifully proportioned and decorated Taj Mahal (1632-48), also in Agra. A typical tomb was a high central dome surrounded by smaller chambers arranged about two intersecting axes so that all four sides of the structure are alike. It is built on a raised platform overlooking a large formal garden, surrounded by a wall, with pavilions at the axial points.
Each of the 16th- and 17th-century Mughal emperors elaborated the huge forts at Lahore, Delhi, and Agra. These forts included living quarters, mosque, baths, public and private audience halls, and the harem. One compound, that of Fatehpur Sikri, was begun in 1571 and abandoned in 1585. See Indian Art and Architecture.
Islam forbade the representation of persons and animals; yet craftsmen created highly ornamented buildings. The motifs are geometrical designs, floral arabesques, and Arabic calligraphy. The materials are glazed tile, wood joinery and marquetry, marble, mosaic, sandstone, stucco carving, and white marble inlaid with dark marbles and gemstones. See Islamic Art and Architecture.
The New Age
The cultural revolution in Western civilization now called the Renaissance brought about an entirely new age, not only in philosophy and literature but in the visual arts as well. In architecture, the principles and styles of ancient Greece and Rome were revived and reinterpreted, to remain dominant until the 20th century.
Renaissance Architecture
The Renaissance, literally meaning “rebirth,” brought into being some of the most significant and admired works ever built. Beginning in Italy about 1400, it spread to the rest of Europe during the next 150 years.
Italian Renaissance Architecture
The families who governed rival cities in northern Italy in the 15th century-de Medici, Sforza, da Montefeltro, and others-had become wealthy enough through commerce to become patrons of the arts. People of leisure began to take serious scholarly interest in the neglected Latin culture-its literature, its art, and its architecture, whose ruins lay about them.
Early in the 15th century the city of Florence was in the process of completing its cathedral. Piers had already been erected to support a dome almost as large as that of the Pantheon in Rome. A proposal for its completion was submitted by Filippo Brunelleschi, who had studied Roman structural solutions. His constructed dome (1420-36) is derived from Rome but is different; it is of masonry, is octagonal, has inner and outer shells connected by ribs, is pointed and rises higher, and is crowned with a lantern. Its drum with circular windows stands alone without buttressing, for the base contains a tension ring-huge stone blocks held together with iron clamps and topped with heavy iron chains. Two additional tension rings are contained within the dome’s double shells. Brunelleschi stood at the threshold between Gothic and Renaissance. His Pazzi Chapel (begun c. 1441), also in Florence, is a clear statement of new principles of proportion and design.
A new type of urban building evolved at this time-the palazzo, or city residence of a prominent family. The palazzi were several stories high; rooms were grouped around a cortile, or courtyard; the outer walls of the palazzo were on the lot lines.
The Florentine architect Leon Battista Alberti, in his design for the Palazzo Rucellai (1446-51), employed in its facade three superposed classic orders, much as in the Roman Colosseum, except that he used pilasters instead of engaged columns. They seem to have been engraved in the wall plane; the resulting compartmentalization of the facade provides a logical setting for the windows. Alberti also published in 1485 the first book on architectural theory since Vitruvius, which became a major influence in promoting classicism.
In the 16th century, Rome became the leading center for the new architecture. The Milanese architect Donato Bramante practiced in Rome beginning in 1499. His Tempietto (1502), an elegantly proportioned circular temple in the courtyard of San Pietro in Montorio, was one of the earliest Renaissance structures in Rome.
The erection of a new basilica of Saint Peter in Vatican City was the most important of many 16th-century projects. In drawing the first plan (1503-06) Bramante rejected the Western basilica concept in favor of a Greek cross of equal arms with a central dome. Popes who came after Julius II, however, appointed other architects-notably Michelangelo and Carlo Maderno-and, when the church was completed in 1612, the Latin cross form had been imposed with a lengthened nave. Michelangelo’s dome, ribbed and with a lantern, is a logical development from Brunelleschi’s in Florence. It rises in a high oval and is the prototype not only for later churches but for many state capitol buildings in the U.S.
Toward the middle of the 16th century such leading architects as Michelangelo, Baldassare Peruzzi, Giulio Romano, and Giacomo da Vignola began to use the classical Roman elements in ways that did not conform to the rules that governed designs in the early Renaissance. Arches, columns, and entablatures came to be used as devices to introduce drama through depth recession, asymmetry, and unexpected proportions and scales. This tendency, called Mannerism, is exemplified by Giulio’s sophisticated Palazzo del T? (1526-34) at Mantua.
The architect Andrea Palladio practiced in the environs of Vicenza and Venice. Although he visited Rome, he did not wholly adopt the Mannerist approach. He specialized in villas for gentleman farmers. These villas explore all the variations on the classical norms: governing axis defined in the approach, single major entrance, single major interior space surrounded by smaller rooms, secondary functions extended in symmetrical arms, and careful attention to proportion. They were immortalized by Palladio’s publication The Four Books of Architecture (1570; trans. 1738), in which drawings for them appear, with the dimensions written into the plans to emphasize Palladio’s harmonic series of dimensions that govern the major proportions. These books later enabled Inigo Jones in England and Thomas Jefferson in Virginia to propagate Palladian principles among the gentleman farmers of their times. In two large Venetian churches, San Giorgio Maggiore (1565) and II Redentore (1577), Palladio made important contributions toward the adaptation of classic ideas to the liturgical and formal traditions of Roman Catholicism.
Northern Renaissance Architecture
Renaissance ideas had spread rapidly to France by 1494. French royal policy was to attract Italian artists (beginning with Leonardo da Vinci in 1506) while at the same time encouraging and developing native talent. It is believed that the Italian architect Domenico da Cortona designed the extraordinary Ch?teau de Chambord that Francis I built (1519-47) in the Loire Valley, which retains outward characteristics of a medieval castle. The French architects Jacques Androuet du Cerceau the Elder and Philibert Delorme worked at Fontainebleau, and Delorme was architect for the Ch?teau d’Anet, where Benvenuto Cellini was employed as sculptor. In Paris, work on the Louvre was undertaken by Pierre Lescot in 1546.
Philip II of Spain engaged Juan de Herrera and Juan Bautista de Toledo as architects for his colossal Escorial (1563-84) near Madrid-half palace, half monastery. England was somewhat slower to change. Inigo Jones, its principal early Renaissance architect, visited Italy and emulated Palladio in such works as the Banqueting House (1619-22) in Whitehall, London. See Renaissance Art and Architecture.