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GOTHIC ART (3) Chapter 4 (continued) THE SCULPTURE

ART GOTHIC

CHAPTER 4: THE GOTHIC SCULPTURE (continued)

Jacques rouveyrol

II. ICONOGRAPHY: THE FORM.

1. New themes :

From the Apocalypse eardrums novels we pass on the eardrums Gothic Christ in glory at the Last Judgement and the Glory of the Virgin. God ceases to be this terrible and irrelevant to humans. He became the Father. One who shares the good and evil, reward or punish. Is that her son has a mother, like men. God has "humanized". It nevertheless remains a severe judge. but that his Mother or the Saints can be influenced by their prayers.

2. Gothic grammar.

a. Signs, not symbols .

images (sculptures, paintings) together produce a script made of signs not symbols as repeated too souvent.Un sign is a difference. A sign that only makes sense to distinguish the signs which it attaches itself. The report of the signifier (eg the cruciform nimbus halo that the face of Christ) to the signified (Christ) is arbitrary (we could have him add a non-cruciferous nimbus, as does the other saints). While the report in the symbol of the signifier (the cross, for example) to the signified (the Christians) is "justified" (in the sense that Christians can not be represented by anything: a scale or a sword, which valent them to justice). Thus, Jesus inherited the cruciform nimbus has no other meaning than this: it is not confused with those who inherit the simple nimbus. But the reverse would have been possible.La mandorla or glory surrounding a body designated by it as being that of God or the Virgin. Barefoot, God, Jesus, angels, the apostles. To distinguish them from the Virgin, saints and other ordinary people (not provided with a halo and thus distinguished from the Virgin and other saints who have in common with them to have their feet shod).

b. Types.

Types are gradually up until we find in works of the seventeenth, XVII and XIX centuries even. Thus, there is a type Saint-Pierre, recognizable features of the face, independent of the keys are another sign of recognition (that is to say, of distinction). St. Paul type, independent of the sword that distinguishes turn. One type Saint Jean-Baptiste (less independent, this time, the skin of sheep that dresses).

Other figures are constants of the Gothic script. Thus the Church (Virgin crowned, bearing in his hand the Grail who collected the blood of Christ) opposite the Synagogue (woman coronnée a pointed hat, blindfolded (there is the symbol). The first is the message of Christ so clearly and directly granted by God Himself in the person of his son. The second carries the message distorted, veiled prophets and failed to recognize the divinity of Jesus.

c. The hierarchy of places: up / down, right / left.

Depending on whether the figure is placed in one place or another, its value is not the same. In Tetramorph example, St. Matthew is at the top right (of Christ) and St. John on the left while St. Mark and St. Luke are respectively the bottom left and right (of Christ).

d. The Order of the retail :

The bases of statues. They say something about the statue that they support. Basil and IPAC (death and sin) are under the feet of Christ in triumph. The Saints have beneath them the kings who were persecuted and, in the end, they triumphed them too.

locations in the church have their meaning. In North (night and wrinkling) episodes from the Old Testament. South (day, heat) of Nouveau.Les those numbers, in turn, sigifient.

What are the twelve apostles is not indifferent. "4" is the number of matter (four items) and "3", that of the spirit (Holy Trinity). Thus ("4x3 = 12") the apostles are those who import the spirit in matter, God in the world.

5. Symbols.

cinqVierges The wise correspond to the five contemplations while the five foolish virgins describe the five senses and lust). The Resurrection means lion.
Attributes: Lamb / John the Baptist, Moses / serpent of brass or tables of the law, Abraham / young child (Isaac), Isaiah / stem of Jesse.

6. Painting.

Gothic painting to stained glass is to be found. The illumination is only imitating the light and texture of the window.

III. ICONOGRAPHY: THE CONTENT.

The cathedral is not only an arch or foreshadowing of the heavenly Jerusalem (City of God), it is as a book. No, once again, a bible of the illiterate, because you have just read (we have just seen) to understand the iconography, but rather an encyclopedia that summarizes and explains the totality of knowledge (of the time ). (See Emile Male). The source, the Speculum majus ( The Great Mirror of the World ) of Vincent of Beauvais, which splits into four "mirrors".

1. The Mirror of Nature .

Nature is nothing but the incarnation of the Mind of God. He has designed, he created under his plans, it expresses exactly his thinking. Rest you need to know to read it. All the work of "science" is to decipher what "text". So, take a walnut (nothing is more common), the nuts of St. Victor. First there is the envelope. It has two meanings: it is either the humanity of Christ or the World. Then there is the shell which will have two more meaning in connection with those of the envelope: it is the wood of the cross or sin. Finally there is the fruit that is the hidden divinity of Christ or the Mind of God. So all in all things and God everywhere.

There are still animals. All, of course, are not symbolic. The most important designate the four Evangelists. They are the Tetramorph. This is the Eagle (St. John but also Ascension of Jesus, and among the virtues, contemplation), the angel or man (Matt. but also the incarnation of Jesus and, as a virtue, wisdom ), Lion (St. Mark's but also the Resurrection of Jesus, and courage as a virtue) and Ox (St Luke, but also the Crucifixion of Jesus, and temperance as a virtue). The snake (or dragon) is the devil. The elephant symbolizes the Fall. The asp is sin and basil death, he was vu.Encore once all the animals are not symbolic. The oxen of Laon are a tribute to the work done by these animals during the construction of the cathedral. Besides, they express creative power of God (see, for example at the north portal of Chartres Creation of Animals).

2.The mirror Science .

Cathedral is the mirror of nature. She is also a mirror of science. On its walls all that science knowledge has exposed.

a. Practical Science :

Letravail. These are the "calendars" describing the s occupation of each month linked with the zodiac sequence.

b. Speculative science :

The medieval science is not like ours, an instrument of domination of nature (science, "Make ourselves masters and possessors of nature", Descartes was programming since the seventeenth century), it is the interpreter. And she taught in a specific order. Hence the organization of studies: the trivium (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (geometry, artithmétique, astronomy, music), finally philosophy (or theology). These are the disciplines who will be personified (often by reference to an authentic scholar (Aristotle, Pythagoras, Boethius, etc.)..

c. The exclusion of laziness :

If science is manifested in the work, it takes the number of figures who represent the antithetical figure of laziness which is under the form of the Wheel of Fortune. Randomly assign the task of providing for our sustenance, here is laziness the mother of all vices.

3. The Mirror of Morality .

The third dimension of knowledge, is the moral, behavioral science.

a. The novel model :

There is a moral novel model: The Psychomachia Prudence: the battle of virtues and vices that adorns many capitals. It is an internal struggle which will inspire sculptors novels. The Gothic will look elsewhere and not to the same models as they are illuminators and sculptors.

b. Gothic models for illumination:

The Tree of Virtues and Vices (below) of Hugh of St. Victor and the Ladder of Virtues of Honorius of Autun.

c. Sculptors :

They detain any of these models and contrast pairs virtues and vices.

We will hold with the theologians of the time, three catégiories virtues:

->. the theological virtues: Faith (idolatry), Hope (Vice: despair), Charity (vice: greed). These are virtues without which there is no hope of Hi.
->. the cardinal virtues: Chastity (vice: intemperance), Prudence (or Wisdom defect: insanity), Strength (or courage vice: cowardice), Justice (or obedience; vice: Rebellion).
->. other virtues, for example, humility (Vice: pride), patience (vice: anger), sweetness (vice: hardness), harmony (or peace; vice: discord), etc..

4. The Mirror of History

Finally, the cathedral will be the mirror History. Not to profane history is hardly provided with meaning, but the only history that is worth: Sacred History as recorded by the Old and New Testament . This History, will be to understand, that is to say, since the Old Testament is the proclamation of the New, to find correspondences between the two. The lives of saints on one side and the Jewish people, on the other, reason from one end to another of history. We must understand and explain these reasons.
Thus the Sacrifice of Isaac prefigures Does Christ's. The water from the rock by Moses the blood that escapes from the wound made in the side of Christ by Longinus. Jonas from the mouth of the whale, the resurrection of Christ. And so on. The windows of the cathedral are subtle commentaries on the Bible.

Let this piece of stained glass from Lyon. It establishes connections between Old Testament, New Testament and symbols. This gives, from bottom to top:

1. Isaiah the prophet who announced the birth of Jesus by a Madonna, the Annunciation, the angel who announces the birth of Jesus to the Virgin and the Unicorn, is a clean animal that can be approached only by a virgin.
2. The burning bush burning without being consumed, the Virgin birth without having "consumed" the fleece of Gideon is covered with dew no natural reason.
3. Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to God, Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross for the salvation of men, the serpent of brass is high in the desert by Moses to save the Jews sent fiery serpents as punishment
4. spit Jonah by the whale returns to the world Jesus resurrected on the third day, the lions that seem dead in the first three days seem to come alive again the third under the inspiration of their father.
5. The kladrius is a bird that can tell whether a patient will live or die; Ascension of Christ who will live after death so the eagle is the bird that rises above and to learn to fly his small, the load on its wings.

Each text, moreover, carries three meanings: the literal or historical meaning (we reported a fact: Abraham existed) and a moral sense or tropological ( is the immediate meaning of this fact: the Faith. Abraham, despite the hesitations of God who gives and takes away a son obeys, no doubt for a second that it is God which he directs. He does not know that God tests his faith, of course, otherwise it would not be an ordeal, but he thinks). A mystical or allegorical meaning (the Crucifixion of Christ prefigured by the sacrifice of Isaac).

But the life of Christ (New Testament is to interpret). And legends attached to them without having figured. Thus one of two midwives and Salome Zelem example. One is surprised that Mary is still a virgin after giving birth and one question. When verifying the hand, it dries out. Only by asking forgiveness and Child Jesus and by an act of faith she finds the use of sipping his main sources of inspiration, in addition to the New Testament will The Golden Legend of Jacques de Voragine.

5. The Evolution representations.

can see the contents of Gothic sculpture and its sources. Consider also, ultimately, shape. Not the general characteristics discussed above, but its special features. Especially the evolution of certain figures, for example, the Virgin

a. Roman:

Virgin in Majesty. Frontal, hieratic sitting on his throne with the Child on her lap, she is the throne of God. Nothing that is feminine or maternal.

b. Early Gothic :

Top humanization of the Virgin. In the thirteenth century, the Virgin "humanized". The child slips on one knee and turned his face towards her mother, or playing with her.
d. Classic gothic :

The Virgin Mother. Here it is standing, holding the Child on her arm and smiling at him. The Virgin became a mother.

e. Latest Gothic

Woman. In the fifteenth century, is the Lady of Pain, the mother who just lost her child. Souffre.Ainsi the woman who, as God "humanized", as noted above, the Virgin is experiencing a similar humanization.
f. Life of the Virgin

Life of the Virgin becomes a key theme of writing in portals and on the facades of cathedrals. The scenes are represented most naturally the Annunciation, the Visitation, death and Assumption.
An apparently very common theme is stated on the tympanum of the Coronation of the Virgin. This view of things being otherwise objectionable. Indeed the fact of placing a wreath on the head d'une vierge équivaut de la part d'un homme à une demande en mariage. Il est évident que ce n'est pas sa mère que le Christ demande en mariage. Par ailleurs, on se souvient qu'une femme portant couronne caractérisait l'Eglise par opposition à la Synagoge. Ainsi, le Couronnement de la Vierge, ne serait en fait que le Mariage mystique de Dieu avec l'Eglise.
Cette représentation évolue au cours du temps. Dans la formule la plus ancienne, la couronne est déjà sur la tête de "la Vierge". Puis, il reviendra à un ange de déposer la couronne. Dans la formule finale, vers 1250 (la plus explicitement matrimoniale) c'est le Christ qui dépose la couronne sur la tête de l'Eglise.

The cathedral is not an arch in which mankind can seek refuge, not only the foreshadowing of the heavenly Jerusalem, it is a book. An encyclopedia or reflects all the knowledge of the Middle Ages. When, in Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo, entitled the chapter in which he mentions the invention of printing and the end of medieval architecture: This will kill it, it esprime perfectly the reality of Gothic sculpture.