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Chartres and the Birth of Cathedral
Description of the themes of the great doorways and rose windows covers virtually the whole Christian story.
130 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 25, 2023
no les voy a mentir, la segunda mitad la leí sin poner un gramo de atención pero overall, this was great! (i think?)
August 21, 2015
Impressive short history of Christian worship up until the construction of Notre-Dame de Chartres. Close attention to theological significance of building styles; more engaging than most art or architectural writing I've read. Extensively researched with a wide variety of often obscure sourcing. Burckhardt's other books look engrossing too. One can only wish for better or more relevant illustrations, though the ones choosen are beautiful.
June 4, 2021
Between the yers 1140 and 1150 the three-part doorway on the west front of Chartres cathedral was constructed. This has always been called the Royal Door, because the upright figures on the door-supports in part represent kings and queens of the Old Covenant.
The style of this door is still Romanesque in its reposeful equilibrium, and yet it is already Gothic in that the repose of its parts no longer strives earthwards, but upwards, as if these parts rose aloft like lights burning motionlessly. The forms are still austere and enclosed within themselves; they deliver themselves up as little to the uncertain light that changes constantly from morning to evening, as to the uncertain movements of the human soul. Bright and dark areas are created by smooth and rough surfaces.
From the point of view of their deepest meanings, the images on the three-fold Royal Door represent the most complete expression of doctrine that has ever been incorporated in the walls and supports of a doorway. Christ appears three times, each time in the middle of a tympanum: above the right-hand entrance, we see Him freshly descended to earth, sitting on the lap of His enthroned Mother; above the left-hand entrance, He ascends to Heaven, surrounded by angels; and on the central tympanum, He reveals Himself in His eternal majesty. The Nativity seems to indicate Christ's human nature, and the Ascension His Divine nature; but the immediate reference is simply to His coming and His going, to the fact that He is the alpha and omega of earthly existence, between which two extremes His eternal majesty stands, like the present moment between yesterday and tomorrow. These are the three different meanings of the Door - the Door that is Christ Himself.
The regular relationship of different movements to one another is rhythm. The day, the year, the lunar cycle, are the great rhythms which measure all change, and in this regard astronomy, the last member of the quadrivium, is the science if cosmic rhythms. Number, proportion, harmony and rhythm are clear manifestations of unity in diversity, and also clear indications of the way of return from diversity to unity. According to Boethius, the essence of things is intimately connected with unity: the more unity a thing possesses in itself, the more profoundly it participates in being.
In medieval science, it is less a question of knowing many things than of having a 'whole' view of existence.
The interior of Romanesque churches was usually decorated with wall pictures; the walls under the windows, the semicircle of the apse, and often the flat wooden roof, offered themselves for pictorial representations like blank pages in a book. In the Gothic cathedrals, however, there was scarcely an empty wall for paintings; it is true that the capitals, cornices and ribs were overlaid with colour, and the inside of the vaulting was strewn with golden stars; but pictorial art was almost entirely confined to the tapestries of light that were the windows, which themselves increasingly took the place of walls. It is characteristic of Gothic architecture that pictorial decoration is not merely added to the building: paintings are not merely added to the wall, or attached to it like costly ornaments in relief; just as the statues hewn out of stone become like members of the building itself, in the form of pillars, ribs or arches and sills, so also the stained-glass windows belong integrally to the building, which without them, could not be: the walls of Gothic cathedrals are not transpierced so that people can see out; they are intended as walls of light, r of luminous precious stones, like the walls of the Heavenly Jerusalem.
Pictures as walls, and walls as light: the light, indeed, only becomes visible because of the stained-glass windows. For in itself light cannot be seen; one can only see the objects that it illumines, or the blinding sun itself. By passing through stained glass, the light uncovers its inner richness of colours, and itself becomes an object of vision.
The refraction of the uncoloured light into a spectrum of colours is the most direct symbol of the fact that, in the Divine Being, the essential forms of all things are contained. For colours are properties of light, and properties are essential characteristics, and thus are 'forms; in the sense that this word had for medieval thinkers.
The style of this door is still Romanesque in its reposeful equilibrium, and yet it is already Gothic in that the repose of its parts no longer strives earthwards, but upwards, as if these parts rose aloft like lights burning motionlessly. The forms are still austere and enclosed within themselves; they deliver themselves up as little to the uncertain light that changes constantly from morning to evening, as to the uncertain movements of the human soul. Bright and dark areas are created by smooth and rough surfaces.
From the point of view of their deepest meanings, the images on the three-fold Royal Door represent the most complete expression of doctrine that has ever been incorporated in the walls and supports of a doorway. Christ appears three times, each time in the middle of a tympanum: above the right-hand entrance, we see Him freshly descended to earth, sitting on the lap of His enthroned Mother; above the left-hand entrance, He ascends to Heaven, surrounded by angels; and on the central tympanum, He reveals Himself in His eternal majesty. The Nativity seems to indicate Christ's human nature, and the Ascension His Divine nature; but the immediate reference is simply to His coming and His going, to the fact that He is the alpha and omega of earthly existence, between which two extremes His eternal majesty stands, like the present moment between yesterday and tomorrow. These are the three different meanings of the Door - the Door that is Christ Himself.
The regular relationship of different movements to one another is rhythm. The day, the year, the lunar cycle, are the great rhythms which measure all change, and in this regard astronomy, the last member of the quadrivium, is the science if cosmic rhythms. Number, proportion, harmony and rhythm are clear manifestations of unity in diversity, and also clear indications of the way of return from diversity to unity. According to Boethius, the essence of things is intimately connected with unity: the more unity a thing possesses in itself, the more profoundly it participates in being.
In medieval science, it is less a question of knowing many things than of having a 'whole' view of existence.
The interior of Romanesque churches was usually decorated with wall pictures; the walls under the windows, the semicircle of the apse, and often the flat wooden roof, offered themselves for pictorial representations like blank pages in a book. In the Gothic cathedrals, however, there was scarcely an empty wall for paintings; it is true that the capitals, cornices and ribs were overlaid with colour, and the inside of the vaulting was strewn with golden stars; but pictorial art was almost entirely confined to the tapestries of light that were the windows, which themselves increasingly took the place of walls. It is characteristic of Gothic architecture that pictorial decoration is not merely added to the building: paintings are not merely added to the wall, or attached to it like costly ornaments in relief; just as the statues hewn out of stone become like members of the building itself, in the form of pillars, ribs or arches and sills, so also the stained-glass windows belong integrally to the building, which without them, could not be: the walls of Gothic cathedrals are not transpierced so that people can see out; they are intended as walls of light, r of luminous precious stones, like the walls of the Heavenly Jerusalem.
Pictures as walls, and walls as light: the light, indeed, only becomes visible because of the stained-glass windows. For in itself light cannot be seen; one can only see the objects that it illumines, or the blinding sun itself. By passing through stained glass, the light uncovers its inner richness of colours, and itself becomes an object of vision.
The refraction of the uncoloured light into a spectrum of colours is the most direct symbol of the fact that, in the Divine Being, the essential forms of all things are contained. For colours are properties of light, and properties are essential characteristics, and thus are 'forms; in the sense that this word had for medieval thinkers.
October 1, 2017
I hope to celebrate my 60th birthday at Chartres, that's my plan anyway. No one illuminates the deep meaning that inhabits the greatest spiritual architecture for me like Titus Burckhardt. His "disciple" Keith Critchlow gave the best lecture I've ever heard on this cathedral long, long ago at St John the Divine in NYC back in 1978 or 79, and he contributed a foreword to this book. I can't fault the text or the plan drawings, but I wish this had been more abundantly illustrated with regard to the very detailed descriptions of the three sets of portals. There were good color illustrations of the glass, but I could have used more. Drawings of the sculptures are very helpful in the way that sometimes paintings in bird books are a better aid to recognition than photos of birds with all their variations.
ANYWAY, I'm glad I'm going to see Chartres at last, and glad to have this book as a beginning of understanding.
ANYWAY, I'm glad I'm going to see Chartres at last, and glad to have this book as a beginning of understanding.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews