In 1241, King Louis IX was 27 years old, when he decided to build the Sainte Chapelle to house his great treasures – the relics of Christ. In the thirteenth century, the kingdom of France was a prosperous nation in wealth and power. The popular and well-known university, Notre dame was located in Paris that occupied over 200,000 students from many different cultures. “In 1237, the new Franc Emperor of the East, Baudoin II de Dourtenay, was faced by heavy expenses of a mainly military nature; he tried to meet these by selling the Relics of the Passion that were preserved in Byzantium and which he had already partly pledged to the Venetians” (Finance 4). In 1239, Louis bought from him the Holy Crown of Thorns, and two years later bought from him fragments of the True Cross and other relics connected to Christ. King Louis IX was a model for all Christian kings, and this reaffirmed his devotion to Christ, made his kingdom shine in western Christianity, and supported the empire of France. “It is probable that from this date onwards the king thought of building a monumental reliquary to house the precious relics in a dignified manner within the palace precincts, in a similar fashion of the Christian Emperors of the East” (Finance 5). The Sainte Chapelle sparkles like a rare jewel that has magnificent architecture and decoration; the stain glass windows seem to be inside of a jewel case. The many jewels seem to change color every hour with the sunlight rays bouncing back and forth. “The founder, King Louis IX, the future St. Louis, who had it built to house the Holy Relics of the Passion, today dispersed” (Finance 1). The spire has statues of Christ’s apostles at the base of the spire and has angles decorated above the apostles. The ...
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Another example of Christian iconography is The Transfiguration. It is located in the Church of Saint Catherine’s monaster...
“Q&A with Brian Jacques.” Redwall.org. Redwall Abbey Co. Ltd. 11 Apr. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2011
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The landscape in Madonna with Chancellor Rolin (1436) (pl. 1) shows Van Eyck’s exquisite eye for detail. The battlements of the palace suggest that it is a fortress, built of the edge of an escarpment. The background is a perfectly formed Medieval city divided by river (pl. 2). Symbolically, the Virgin is seated on the grandiose side of town. On the right hand side there are Gothic buildings, and a cathedral which city dwellers are flocking to, suggesting a mass pilgrimage of faith to the Virgin. The accuracy of the background city have led to many attempts to identify it, with connotations of Bruges. However, it is most like...
Mathias Grunewald (c. 1470-1528) was a German painter who created the Isenheim Altarpiece between 1512 and 1516. This work consists of different wings that fold out to reveal more of the work (Collings, 2007) (including the crucifixion of Christ), is on the display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace, France, and was commissioned for the Monastery of Saint Anthony in Isenheim, near Colmar. On one of these wings is the figure of Saint Anthony of Egypt, whose temptation has been the inspiration for many works of art as well as literature. Unlike other artists of the Renaissance period, Grunewald’s paintings depict religious figures as artists of the middle ages had done, creating imagery for the Church in Rome. And while the Isenheim Altarpiece, and indeed the Temptation of Saint Anthony, was commissioned b...
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It was a don of a new age, belief, conviction, and devotion were felt throughout the period, and it was the time of the Romanesque churches. This was the time to view these boundless, monastic complexes, majestic cathedrals, and painted artifacts; the churches were beaming with activity and life. With the assembly of nuns, monks, and local town folks, these structures offered safety, a simpler way of life thru thought, simplicity, and reflection, which than sparked an overall energy and spirit throughout the air, it was the age of faith. In this period of time a massive building project had begun, within a short time span of 150 years, the construction of more than 1000 monasteries, and abbeys were built throughout Western Europe. Some of the main architecturally features and designs were the massive towers pointed heavenward and seemed as if they were touching the sky, it made the church visible from great distances and became the center point of the towns where they were built. The stone portals separated the nonspiritual, from the divine realm and dramatized the entrance door, as the gateway to salvation. The Gothic style of architecture, or Gothic cathedral began in the seventeenth century and was born in France, Over 580 Gothic & cathedrals class churches were built and constructed between 1170 to 1270; they were often large enough to house the entire population of the town. Two dominant architectural designs and styles emerged Romanesque and Gothic; there were differences and some similarities between the two. If the Romanesque church constituted a rural retreat for monastics and pilgrims, the Gothic cathedral served as the focal point for the urban community physically dominated the town, the design of the to...
The Basilica of St. Denis was originally built in 500-599 AD, but was later reconstructed by Abbot Suger in c.1135-1144. Although its original architect is unknown, it is most famous for its reconstruction that was overseen by Abbot Suger (Panofsky). This basilica is also well known for its representation of Europe’s architectural shift from the Romanesque style to Gothic. The Gothic style brought new designs and was dubbed the “transformat...
After walking inside and trying to first experience, the church, and all its beauty and ornateness, I began examining the floor plan and elevations of the cathedral. Grace Cathedral was build in a gothic style, which it represents in its architecture inside and out. There were three huge rose windows. One at the very top of the main entrance and one on either end of the transept. There wer...
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Sculpture in the exteriors and interior of these churches were decorated. Large figures of the kings were placed in the frontage, while the entrance were lined by the pillar – statues of saints, angels and apostles and other parts of the buildings were covered with decorative cusps and finials. The Gothic sculptures revolutionary were beyond their Romanesque of precursors in their notion of the figures as independent. Gothic sculpture became more complex in the consequent centuries. Figure of the Virgin in the South transept of Notre Dame de Paris is an example of such Gothic figure in France. F...
It is interesting story that the cathedrals try to tell with scholasticism, politics, and the religion under the influential umbrella of the Christian ideology. While it was a very practical and expressive on its own rights a magnificent feat in engineering and symbolically; the most notable part...