Ebook: The Gothic Cathedral

Awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock
Medallion by the Society of Architectural
Historians of Great Britain for an
outstanding contribution to architectural
history
The Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages are
among the world’s supreme architectural
achievements. Hundreds of great churches were
built between c.1130 and c.1530, all of them
representing an investment of money and effort
so immense that it is difficult to find a modern
parallel. Their architecture ranges through a
whole spectrum of styles, including meticulously
articulated French Early Gothic, brittle glass-
walled Rayonnant, eclectic and densely inventive
English Decorated, jaggedly fantastical German
late Gothic, and blandly decorous Tuscan.

The Gothic Cathedral focuses on the interaction
between design and the requirements of patrons,
following the creative processes of architects by
reconstructing the problems and opportunities
which faced them. Christopher Wilson presents
the essential facts on such aspects as chronology,
structural techniques and stylistic developments;
and then goes further, seeing the story as a
sequence of choices from which new solutions
arose, which, in their turn, gave rise to still more
challenges.

Illustrated with carefully chosen photographs
and specially drawn diagrams, this fresh,
perceptive and provocative book has already
established itself'as a definitive introduction to the
subject. For this paperback edition, the author has
incorporated the results of the most recent
research and added new bibliographical material.
CHRISTOPHER WILSON, a graduate of the
Courtauld Institute of Art, is Reader in the
History of Art at University College, London.
He is the author of many publications on
medieval architecture.

With 221 illustrations