Earlier cathedrals had made use of the sexpartite vault, creating essentially square bays. Rebuilt after a fi re of 1194, Chartres simplified the sexpartite vault; the transverse ribs across each bay were removed so that the vault became quadripartite.

The other innovation at Chartres was a return to the three-storey bay elevation, but in reconfigured form. The gallery was removed from the four-storey arrangement, leaving just a low triforium dividing the tall arcade and clerestory levels.

This simplified arrangement, with shaft piers beginning in the arcade, meant that the eye was drawn up through the arcade to the clerestory to the vault above. The overall effect of this arrangement, combined with the narrower bays, was to accentuate the horizontal and especially vertical dynamism.

Early Gothic cathedrals tended to treat a wall as a solid surface that was punched through with pointed-arched windows. In the High Gothic the effect is reversed. The pointed arch becomes the starting point. The columns are thinner, the moulding deeper, and the space itself seems to be constructed by the arch’s repetition and articulation.

First at Reims and then soon after at Amiens, Early Gothic plate tracery was replaced with bar tracery. Bar tracery was built up within each pointed-arch aperture with complex geometrical patterns filled with coloured glass.

The overall effect was far more decorative than the comparatively austere Early Gothic cathedrals, and in England the High Gothic is known as the Decorated phase. Combined with ornate pinnacles and more complex patterns and mouldings, the new Decorated traceries created bold edifi ces for the east end of Lincoln Cathedral, the west front of York Minster, and the crossings of the cathedrals at Ely and Bristol.

Bar tracery Unlike earlier plate tracery, which appeared to cut through a solid wall, bar tracery fi lled in an open space in the wall. This allowed the designer far more freedom in the choice of geometric pattern. Recurring forms appearing in bar-traceried windows included foils, daggers and mouchettes, all arranged in a variety of patterns.

 

 

South rose window, Notre Dame, Paris, begun ca. 1258

 Rose window Circular windows had existed in Romanesque and Early Gothic architecture. There they tended to be relatively simple ‘wheel’ windows, formed by a number of thick bars radiating from a small central aperture. The advent of bar tracery resulted in more intricate, petal-like designs at Chartres and Laon, and later at Notre Dame.

 

 

Reims Cathedral, Marnes, France, begun 1211