Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/116

 XIV. — Gothic Architecture. Gothic architecture is sometimes termed Pointed archi- tecture — from the almost invariable occurrence of the pointed arch in buildings — and sometimes, but less accu- rately, Christian architecture. Gothic was the style adopted in Europe from the middle of the twelfth century to the classical revival of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The round-arched Gothic style is a term applied by many writers to the transitional style between Romanesque and Pointed. The word Gothic was first used in derision by the artists of the Renaissance, to characterise this art as quaint and antiquated. But this, the original meaning of the word, is now quite lost, and the term has come to be generally accepted, in the way we have described. The chief peculiarities of a Gothic building are the disuse of horizontal cornices and of such gables as have a very moderate slope; and the introduction of vertical or very sharply-pointed features, such as gables, spires, buttresses, high-pitched roofs (often open and made ornamental), pointed arches, and pointed instead of waggon-headed vaults ; the substitution of mouldings cut into the stone for projecting mouldings ; and the use of window tracery. In late work we meet with piers formed of clustered pillars in the nave arcades, and with flying buttresses. It is, of course, not to be expected that all these peculiarities will occur in every building, or that they are all equally to be met with in every development of the style; but they are all characteristic of it. They were all the result of structural necessities, and have a meaning and purpose of their own.