medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: "John B. Dillon" <[log in to unmask]>
>> [Me:] in "Gothic" buildings, the frescoes are replaced by stained glass
which, when seen "in the flesh" rather than via photographs, positively
*GLOW*, vibrating with light in an eye exposured to them over a period of
time.
> Er, _some_ frescoes are replaced by stained glass. There's lots of
> unwindowed space even in "gothic" churches.
> Tamara Quirico wrote:
>We have lots of frescoed churches in Italy - which maintained the
tradition rather than replacing it with the new stained-glasses windows.
I would say it is more an exception, an italian characteristic.
i'll agree with the latter, and ammend my hasty generalisation to "in French
'Gothic' buildings" or even "in Northern French 'Gothic' buildings".
the Italian tradition of extensive frescoeing certainly appears to continue
without abatement --aided by the proclivity towards smaller windows, even
though the structural advantages of the "Gothic" would have allowed for much
larger ones.
or, was the opposite the case: the taste in Italy was to continue the fresco
tradition, and the windows were deliberately kept small to allow for more wall
space to paint on?
From: "John B. Dillon" <[log in to unmask]>
> Of course we have lots of frescoed churches in Italy. More to the
point, we have lots of frescoed "gothic" churches in Italy. These
undermine the assertion that in "gothic" churches _the_ frescoes (i.e.,
not just some of them) were replaced by stained glass (or by colored
glass of some sort).
what survives of "stained" glass windows --i.e., colored glass panels with
extensive narrative detail-- in Italy?
surely the very French-looking Dominican(?) church we were looking at
yesterday --the one with the large, bar tracery windows-- would not have had
"clear" glass, but perhaps grisaille, at a minimum.
but that place appears to have been something of an exception --or at least in
the minority-- among Italian buildings(?).
>Generalizations about a class of objects that are untrue for a significant
number of objects in that class are misleading and possibly even dangerous, as
they can lead to significant misconceptions about the class as a whole (a case
in point being the frequently seen statement that Italy has very few "gothic"
churches, when it fact it has many, most of which just don't fit someone's
notion of what a "gothic" church really is).
hey, man, don't blame *me* for introducing that unfortunate Construct into
this discussion.
you are Preaching to the Choir, and i'm an Athiest on that particular point.
> I am also not certain that Italy is all that much of an exception with
regard to the use of frescoes in its "gothic" churches. "Gothic"
churches that clearly once had extensive frescoing also occur elsewhere,
for example in the Czech Republic. One may suspect too that, just like
their "romanesque" counterparts, many northern European "gothic"
churches once had extensive frescoing that was later removed either for
confessional reasons or because it was peeling and no longer stable or
even for reasons of changes in taste.
yes, frescoes are not a "maintenance free" medium, even if one can avoid the
occasional catastrophic roof leak, etc.
and white-washing over the somewhat garrish, "primitive" painting which would
have been newly visible once the colored glass windows were replaced by clear
ones (a favorite 18th c. practice) would have been a logical thing to do,
within the context of suchlike vandalism.
certainly in France --my only region of [near-]expertise, there was quite a
lot of painting in Early and High Gothic buildings.
"frescoes", however, are a different matter.
at Chartres (just to pick a place at random), a very considerable amount of
painting has been unearthed in recent decades --photographs of these have been
published by Jan van der Meulen, in both his
_Chartres, Biographie der Kathedrale_ / Jan van der Meulen, Jürgen Hohmeyer.
Köln : DuMont, c1984. 273pp.
and, i believe, in an article in the Bulletin Monumentale --though the latter
might have been the work of Hohmeyer.
i say "unearthed" because, since Chartres retains most of its colored windows,
the interior is quite dark and the painting cannot be seen easily in the gloom
and through the grime of centuries of candle soot
which covers the vaults. (this would not have been the case when the glass
was new, since it has deteriorated and darkened with extreme age, a condition
now *somewhat* ameliorated by recent "restorations".)
but the painting there does not consist of scenes or figures --it is mostly a
matter of picking out the rib vaults and false stones in the webbing, the
latter being regular "ashlar" masonry, the outlines painted in red on a white
plaster ground.
the reason for this painting is not hard to discern : typically, the webbing
of vaults was made up of somewhat irregular stones or, sometimes, even a kind
of rubble set in mortar.
this nearly chaotic appearance might have been thought to be inappropriate for
what was, after all, meant to be an earthly replication of the Heavenly
Jerusalem (and isn't there Scriptural Authority for that latter structure
being made of fine ashlar masonry?).
in any even, the vaults at Chartres appear to have been plastered over and
painted in "faux ashlar", the ribs painted as well, and the mostly foliate
(with a few heads, here and there) keystones painted and/or gilded.
as i recall, the sections of the ribs a few feet before they join the
keystones were also decorated in some fashion, setting off the peak of the
vault.
i *believe* that the there is some evidence that the walls were also painted
in a similar "faux ashlar" fashion --even though those walls were built out of
*real* ashlar masonry.
Chartres is, among other things, a very, very "conservative" building (though
maybe not *quite* "Romanesque", as i said yesterday) and i think that we may
assume that the absence of figurative frescowork reflects the taste au courant
circa 1200.
i'm of the opinion that capitals --especially the more fancy, foliate ones--
were also painted. perhaps the more modest "crocket" [no relation] caps we
find all over Chartres were also painted, in green, perhaps. "Made of Living
Stones" is another attribute of the H.J., i believe.
here is an example of a capital from closer to the middle of the 13th c. which
would surely have been brightly painted
http://site.voila.fr/CentreChartrain/StPiat/Jube/DSC07442.html
from the remains of the Jube of the cathedral.
the question of to what degree polychromy --whether on architectural elements,
figurative sculpture or just plane ole walls-- drastically alters our
*preconception* about what old things looked like is an interesting one.
much of the surviving polychromy on sculpture, for example, seems to run quite
counter to the way we --or, at least, i-- think that these things should have
looked.
here are a couple of examples from that Chartres Jube, one without much
surviving paint
http://site.voila.fr/CentreChartrain/StPiat/Jube/DSC07449.html
and a couple with
http://site.voila.fr/CentreChartrain/StPiat/Jube/DSC07462.html
http://site.voila.fr/CentreChartrain/StPiat/Jube/DSC07460.html
http://site.voila.fr/CentreChartrain/StPiat/Jube/DSC07459.html
the decorative patterns on drapery, particularly, are somewhat jarring to our
tendancy to see these figures in a more or less colorless, "idealized" mode.
the same is true for various architectural elements --i have seen colonnettes
in the triforia of early gothic buildings which are painted with the most
outrageous "chevron" patterns, totally destroying the calm, "rational" clarity
of the quitessentially Gothic ambiance.
> Note that these are _surviving_ areas of fresco on walls, vaults, etc.
once entirely covered with them.
an excellent point.
"surviving" is --or should be-- the operative word whenever one is trying to
generalise about most any area of middevil art.
best from here,
c
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