Romanesque and Gothic France

Gothic was born in France, and its cathedrals became models for the whole of Europe.

Around the year 1000 people began building churches in stone throughout what is now France. The abbey of Cluny in Burgundy led a network of hundreds of monasteries. Along the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela large Romanesque churches rose, with heavy walls, round arches and portals full of sculpture. At Moissac, Vézelay and Autun, reliefs in the tympana of the portals showed Christ as judge or as the one who sends out the apostles.

Around 1140 Abbot Suger had the choir of the abbey church of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, rebuilt. Pointed arches, rib vaults and large windows created a new kind of light. It was the beginning of Gothic. Over the following hundred years cathedrals were built in Paris, Chartres, Reims and Amiens. For a long time the style was called opus francigenum, the French work, and it spread to England, Germany, Spain and Scandinavia. The building projects were driven by bishops, kings and townspeople, all of whom wanted the tallest and brightest church.

In the 14th and 15th centuries the focus of art shifted from the building site to the courts. Kings and dukes commissioned illuminated manuscripts, goldsmiths’ work and large tapestries. The Limbourg brothers painted the book of hours known as the Très Riches Heures for the Duke of Berry. Towards the end of the period Jean Fouquet combined French tradition with influences from Italy and Flanders, and the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance. Meanwhile the religious use of images lived on in churches throughout the country.

• Pilgrimage routes and Romanesque portals
• Suger and the new light of Saint-Denis
• Chartres – the cathedral as a book
• The Sainte-Chapelle and court Gothic
• The splendour of the dukes – books, tapestries and sculpture