Objectives

Towns become cities. An urban culture begins to take shape. New universities are founded. Commerce and trade increase. Guilds are formed. The profiles of some of Europe's modern nation states begin to be discernable. Rifts between spiritual and secular authority appear. The Gothic is a period of enormous change. Amongst this turmoil, some of the grandest expressions of the human spirit take shape in buildings, statues, metalwork, and textiles. Your primary objective for this chapter is to see and enjoy the art presented and to understand the insight it gives to the European psyche; a psyche that was formulating other achievements.

Goals for this chapter include:

• Continue to monitor the map as some of today's great European cities emerge into political, economic, and artistic dominance.

• Grasp the regional flavors of the Gothic style, especially in architecture and painting.

• Take note of the fact that a great many more names of individuals--artists and patrons--are known to us in the Gothic than in the previous periods.

• Learn the basic structural underpinnings of Gothic architectural engineering.

• Understand how engineering is made to yield new ways of shaping space and surfaces.

• Watch for signs of the separation of design and structure--the emergence of the idea of design as a separate category of endeavor.