Gothic Architecture Glossary Study Reference

Expression and Technique of Craft Utilized Within Gothic Churches, Cathedrals & Monasteries

• Annulet : A circular finishing found on pillars or piers, sometimes decorated with carvings.
• Ball flower : An ornamented ball sculpture surmounted in the petals of a flower featured, most often, repetitively within the hollow of moldings. The ball flower motif began to appear as decoration was more strongly emphasized during the thirteenth century being most widely employed within English structures.
• Bar tracery : The dominant class of tracery consisting of decorative patterns formed from stone bars. Finer in its size and cut, bar tracery differentiates itself from other forms of tracery by allowing an other feature of a display to dominate such as glass within a window frame.
• Cinquefoil : A five sided design of converging arcs, often used in frame work.
• Crockets : A distinctive Gothic motif formed of floral and leaf ornamentation. Primarily used on spire and pinnacle sculpture.

• Damp Fold : A sculpting technique in which the lines are long and subtle, giving the featured material a look as though it were damp and clinging to the figure.
Image : A portal jamb figure at Notre Dame de Rheims, France featuring the Damp fold technique.


• Dog tooth molding : An ornamental feature in which pairs of 'tooth-like' pieces of wood or stone are set to each other in diagonal rows.
• Fan vaulting : An intricate form of tracery in which the ribs of a Vault arch out in a concave fan pattern.
• Fluting : Carved vertical hollow groove work sculpted into piers, columns and pillars.

• Fresco : The technique of blending wet plaster with water based paint. As the plaster dries it becomes a lasting surface base. The term applies to the technique as well as the painting itself.
Image : Detail of Madonna Enthroned with Child; fresco (1278-80) by Cimabue, Lower Church, San Francesco, Assisi.


• Impasto : A painting technique where the material is applied in thick layers to wooden panels or canvas; allowing craft strokes to be visible and dimensional aspects enhanced. The resulting textured effect of impasto adds a lifelike dynamic quality to imagery.
• Intaglio : A technique of stylized engraving which is carved beneath the surface layer of a hard material, often stone or metal, leaving a hollowed out negative depiction of the subject.
• Intarsia : A mosaic-like presentation consisting of sculpted elements of wood or stone inlaid within a wooden panel frame, table top or chest facing; materials utilized may also include ivory or precious stone. Intarsia works first appear, within Europe, around Siena during the later half of the fifteenth century.
• Lierne vaulting : Vaults containing small decorative rib work not originating from the corners; primarily found in England.
• Mandorla : The artistic interpretation of a halo or aura surrounding the head of holy figures. An almond shaped motif often used in imagery of the Virgin, Christ or particular saints. Symbolically, the Mandorla has great significance within Medieval Christianity, and is related to the Vesica Pisces. The space which represents the shape of a Mandorla is the overlapping segment of two intersecting circles. In Christian context, the place where Heaven and Earth join as one, perhaps even the doorway between the two. Many cathedral portals feature Christ or the Virgin enthroned within a Mandorla frame.
Image : The figure of Christ within a Mandorla frame; Notre Dame de Chartres, France.


• Polychrome : A painted finish applied mostly to sculpture work, consisting of multiple combinations of color. Popular during the late nineteenth century.
• Predella : Both the foundation upon which an altar is set and the illustrative series of small images or carvings which often decorate the base front of an altarpiece. Predella imagery tends to depict a narrative series such as tales from the bible.
• Quadratura : Primarily a post-Gothic technique, Quadratura painting produces an intended architectural illusion upon a ceiling which creates a sense of a larger room and/or supplementary structural features.
• Relief : A sculpture form in which elements project out of the background frame of a display. Utilized throughout the world, relief sculpture has been widely employed upon and within sacred structures for thousands of years.
  
  Variations in execution include high relief where the primary figures are shown to, at least, half their full dimension; bas-relief, which projects only slightly from the background and incised relief, where the figures are carved below the level of the background. Incised or sunken relief produces the inverse of intaglio sculpting; a hollowed out negative representation.
Image : Twelfth century French capital sculpted in high relief.


• Raredos (Reredos) : An elaborate wall carving or screen utilized primarily on or behind the high altar. Altar displays and the materials which they are crafted from vary widely from region to region and across time.
• Stucco : Traditionally, a soft, workable plaster formed of sand & lime combined with water and a mix of fortifying materials sometimes used in sculpting; primarily applied into a decorative background to cover less attractive material. Decorative use of stucco within churches and cathedrals dates mostly to post-Gothic periods where it proved effective, for example, in quadratura work.
• Tapestry : A loom-worked decorative fabric art illustrated with intricate design or imagery, intended as a wall hung display or covering. Tapestry craft dates back at least as far as ancient Greece; think of Penelope working at her loom on the tapestry of Odysseus's journeys, upon Athena's command. During the late thirteenth century the interest and craft of tapestry was revived in Germany and would eventually reach an artistic apex in fifteenth century France. The tapestry provided an ideal medium for illustrating religious allegory, tales from the Bible and lives of the saints.
Image : A unusual depiction of the Crucifixion, sharing regional pagan symbolism, within a Tapestry at Canterbury cathedral, England.


• Tempera : A combination of paint pigments consolidated with a fast drying binding agent such as, though not limited to, egg white, casein or glue. During the nineteenth century, tempera paints or under paints were used to create an effect of luminescence. Prior to the development of oil-based paints, however, tempera was the dominant medium for European painters. While tempera depictions do not radiate the intense color range of oil paintings their stability has proven reliable through the centuries. Many tempera depictions, especially icons, continue to shine within churches and cathedrals near to as bright as when they were initially installed.
• Tracery : Ornamental stonework consisting of patterned bars; used most often within windows to support the weight of glass. When utilized in this way, such work is more specifically known as Bar Tracery, for its use of thin, decorative bars of stone. Larger window formations are known as Plate Tracery and designs upon solid surfaces without windows are called Blind Tracery.

“The beautiful city of Viterbo twelve miles away, whence Toscanella can be reached most conveniently, has several early Romanesque churches. That of S, Sisto, with an apse that protrudes through the city wall, has capitals that break away from Roman example, and a strange clustered pillar spirally twisted. The Cathedral, though much modernized, has preserved its ancient Romanesque arcades, in which are capitals resembling Byzantine work, with eagles at the angles like those at Salonica, and quadruped sphinxes with a female head and a pair of wings.

In these buildings, and others that are coeval with them, in spite of the rudeness of their execution and the coarseness of their figure sculpture, one cannot fail to see the seed of future excellence. It seemed necessary that the decline which set in with Constantine should reach a bathos before it was arrested, and gave way to the stirrings of a new life.

Ancient tradition was dead or nearly so: technical skill was at the lowest possible ebb: for columns and capitals and such features as required dexterous workmanship, recourse was had to the spoils of ancient buildings: constructional problems were avoided, and the churches were mere walls with wooden roofs, vaults being beyond the builders' humble resources. But in the way these materials were put together, whether they were original or pilfered from old buildings, in the proportions adopted, and in the evident striving after beauty, we see that the artistic sense was alive, that it had in it all the promise of youth, and that it wanted nothing but practice, experience, and knowledge to develop a new and noble art.”

—Thomas Graham Jackson, R.A.,
Byzantine and Romanesque Architecture, 1913