Description
Book SynopsisExamines Gothic architecture and the visual and cultural significance of the adoption of externalized buttressing systems in twelfth-century France. Demonstrates how buttressing frames operated as sites of display, points of transition, and mechanisms of demarcation.
Trade Review“This clearly written and beautifully produced book tests a model for examining a single architectural feature from many angles and provides much-needed context for the study of cathedral exteriors beyond portal sculpture.”
—Meg Bernstein Architectural Histories
“A rich and compelling story of one of the most quintessential features of Gothic architecture.”
—Nancy Wu CAA.Reviews
“Hutterer compellingly transforms our understanding of the French Gothic buttress from a purely structural and visual component to one that also has social and cultural significance for the medieval viewer. Markers of divine space, buttresses are now understood to serve a variety of functions, including providing the setting for commercial exchange and serving as markers of jurisdiction. They now stand revealed as not only part of an architectural system of element and support but also part of a cultural network of sacred meaning and religious authority.”
—Lisa Reilly,author of An Architectural History of Peterborough Cathedral
“From the commercial zones flying buttresses defined on the ground to the protective gargoyles they held up against the sky, the many roles and meanings of this most characteristically Gothic architectural invention are illuminated in Maile Hutterer's lucid, beautifully illustrated book.. Apart from their structural importance, Hutterer expertly demonstrates how, through their distinctive formal design and figural embellishments, flying buttresses shaped urban space and declared the church’s efficacy both within and far beyond the cathedral precinct.”
—Jacqueline E. Jung,author of The Gothic Screen: Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany, ca. 1200-1400
“Framing the Church explores the multivalent impact of the new buttressing systems that transformed Gothic architecture. Anchored by case studies of French buildings from twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, Maile Hutterer creates a rich conversation between ecclesiastical and secular architecture, the visual arts, and historical sources to reveal the push and pull between aesthetics and stability in the design of structural frames, their surprising social consequences, and their role as agents of symbolic expression.”
—Michael T. Davis,Mount Holyoke College
“Maile Hutterer opens our minds to what our eyes have always told us about the great French cathedrals: that the giant flying buttresses that ring their exteriors are not mere structural devices but inspired works of architecture as an art. Unlike the relatively uniform interiors of these huge buildings, no two sets of buttressing are alike. They vary in extravagant and subtle ways, and in the process, they accrue important layers of meaning through sculptural ornament as well as their structure and shaping of space. They now have a meaningful history. A breakthrough contribution to the study of medieval architecture.”
—Marvin Trachtenberg,author of Building-in-Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion
“A provocative and stimulating book.”
—Caroline Bruzelius EuropeNow
“Framing the Church will appeal to a broad range of art, architectural, and urban historians. A stimulating volume on a vast topic, it seems likely to incite new studies of churches not only in France, but the rest of Europe, the Latin East, and perhaps the earliest permanent European settlements in the Americas.”
—Kyle Sweeney Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art & Architecture
“In its scope, accessibility, and import, Framing the Church provides a compelling, interdisciplinary contextualization of the seminal features of Gothic church design in the cultural and aesthetic fabric of French medieval life.”
—Alyce A. Jordan The French Review
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on the Fire at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris, 2019
Introduction
1. Visualizing Buttressing and the Aesthetics of the Frame
2. Negotiating Buttress Spaces
3. Sculptural Programs and the Assertion of Ecclesiastical Hegemony
4. Buttressing-Frame Systems as Signs of Spiritual Protection
Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
Index
