BBC Architects of the Divine The First Gothic Age
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00:00Today, the word gothic conjures up images of horror, of vampires and grotesques, evil
00:13spectres and vulnerable heroines.
00:19Gothic novels inspired cinema, creating a popular culture of nightmares, where monsters
00:27lurk in the shadows, ready to wreak destruction.
00:34But there's an altogether earlier gothic world, a sacred world of great cathedrals
00:46and churches, built in the architectural style we call medieval gothic.
00:57Gothic architecture arrived in England 800 years ago.
01:10It was a style of building that took risks, ever taller, brilliant engineering in stone,
01:17that used pointed arches rather than round ones, intricate tracery and huge stained glass
01:26windows, a new and agile architecture of dazzling light.
01:42But the gothic sensibility shaped more than buildings.
01:46It was a world picture that shaped man's understanding of God in the heavens above,
01:53humanity below, and the day of reckoning never far away.
02:04It was a way of making sense of the world, embracing both the spiritual and the secular.
02:11It seems to represent stability, continuity, and yet the gothic period was one of the most
02:16turbulent in English history, a time of civil war, the assassination of kings and the Black
02:23Death.
02:28Plague would wipe out a third of the population of Christendom and decimate England.
02:36And yet the gothic revolution would reach new heights, especially here in Britain.
02:43It would become a national style, eclipsing the rest of Europe and create a new sense
02:50of English nationhood and patriotism.
02:57Gothic art and architecture would transform medieval England from a European backwater
03:02into a world leader of style and power.
03:3311th century England was a dangerous and oppressive place.
03:43After his victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror and his Norman
03:49barons built castles to subjugate the Anglo-Saxon population of England.
03:57Formidable and overbearing, this was an architecture of conquest.
04:06Known as Romanesque because its swagger harked back to the days of the Roman Empire, walls
04:12were thick, arches were round, and windows almost an afterthought.
04:20And the churches and the cathedrals they built were just as oppressive.
04:26This truly was an architecture you couldn't argue with.
04:33When you come inside a Norman cathedral, there are the same Romanesque characteristics.
04:39The small windows, the rounded arches and the massive columns made of pre-cut stones
04:47or cylinders placed one on top of the other and then filled with rubble.
04:51They go up very quickly and through their sheer bulk, they act as an expression of Norman
04:57supremacy.
04:58But with the Norman invasion came a wave of new clerics.
05:06They would take over the church in England.
05:11None was more powerful than Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury.
05:16Born in Lombardy, he rose to power in England in spite of frequent quarrels with the Norman
05:22kings.
05:25He was a theologian and philosopher who dared to question religious orthodoxy.
05:33The early medieval world had seen mankind trapped in a head-to-head battle between God
05:40and the devil.
05:44Now Anselm wanted to focus on Christ and his humanity.
05:51He even dared address questions of man's free will and how reason could be a meaningful
05:57part of faith.
06:02When he tries to understand why God took human form as Jesus, Anselm concludes that this
06:10was God's ultimate act of love, a gift to humanity, because he let his only son suffer
06:18torture and death so that we could be saved.
06:22Anselm thinks that this should be the true focus of Christian prayer and meditation.
06:41I've come to the British Museum in London to look at two extraordinary ivory carvings.
06:48The difference between the two objects shows what an effect Anselm's thinking would have.
06:57This is an important little object.
07:00It's an ivory carving dated to around 450AD and it shows a very early depiction of Christ
07:07on the cross.
07:09But what do we see?
07:11Well, Christ's legs are quite rigid.
07:13He seems to be standing on a platform and his arms are straight out on the cross.
07:21He looks out at the viewer and he's shown very youthful.
07:24He's not bearded here at all.
07:27What about the people around him?
07:29We've got Mary and John here.
07:31They're not showing any sorrow.
07:33They're being quite stoic.
07:35So why is Christ shown on the cross in this way?
07:38Well, it's to show his divinity.
07:41Here, Christ isn't suffering.
07:44He's moving through death in order to achieve eternal life.
07:48He's triumphant.
07:51But Anselm pursued a faith that focused on the humanity of Christ, a shift in emphasis
07:56and understanding that would transform how art depicted Christ and how worshippers empathised
08:02with him.
08:03Another ivory of the same scene shows a very different picture.
08:09It's 14th century, probably carved in France, so well and truly in the Gothic period.
08:15And you can tell that from the architectural details that frame it.
08:20But something very different is going on with the crucifixion here.
08:24Christ is literally hanging from the cross.
08:27You can see his hands are pointing upwards, emphasising that they're having to support
08:33his whole weight on just one nail.
08:36His head lolls over to one side.
08:39He doesn't make direct eye contact with the viewer anymore.
08:43And his legs bend over to one side too.
08:48He's very thin, almost skeletal.
08:50You can see the bones here in his elbows and even individual ribs in his ribcage.
08:56And this suffering is echoed by the figures around him.
09:00You can see the mourners, Mary and John.
09:03Mary's almost fainting with grief.
09:07So the viewer looking at this is being asked to empathise with this human suffering.
09:19Paris, one of the great sites of medieval pilgrimage.
09:25The faithful flocked here to honour an early martyr to the Christian cause,
09:30Saint-Denis, a third-century bishop of Paris, beheaded for his faith.
09:37But the old church housing his shrine could not cope with the crowds of pilgrims.
09:47It was decided it must be rebuilt,
09:50and in a manner befitting France's premier saint.
09:54Gothic architecture was born.
10:04The head of the Abbey of Saint-Denis at the start of the 12th century
10:09was a man called Herbert Suchet.
10:11Now, he was no meek and modest monk.
10:14He was a friend and advisor to two French kings.
10:18He was a statesman, a patron of the arts and a poet.
10:24Work began in 1140 to build a new choir attached to the old abbey church.
10:31Out went dismal and dark masonry.
10:34In came windows with glorious stained glass.
10:38Daring new pointed arches and ribbed roof vaults
10:42distributed the weight of stone much more skilfully than before,
10:46allowing wider spans, thinner, taller columns and bigger windows.
10:56It was a new sense of light and space
10:59that would define not just a new style of architecture, but of faith too.
11:07Suchet had his own poetry inscribed around the church,
11:11and for the consecration of the new choir,
11:14he wrote,
11:16the church shines with its middle part brightened
11:20and bright is the noble edifice with this new light.
11:28The new style would spread quickly and shocking events across the channel
11:33meant that Gothic would take a hold in England.
11:38CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL
11:41Canterbury Cathedral in Kent.
11:43Peaceful today, but 8½ centuries ago,
11:47the scene of the most infamous murder in British history.
11:56In 1170, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket,
12:01was hacked to death in his own cathedral,
12:04murdered by a band of knights reputedly acting on the orders of the king.
12:11The Pope was quick to respond,
12:13and Becket was made a saint,
12:15transforming Canterbury into the most fashionable destination
12:19for pilgrims throughout Europe.
12:25So when fire destroyed the east end of the cathedral in 1174,
12:30it was clear something extraordinary had to replace it.
12:39A chapel fit for a murdered saint.
12:52Stained glass windows celebrating the life of Becket
12:56and his miraculous powers even after death
12:59are just one splendour of the massive rebuilding operation.
13:14One of the monks of Canterbury, Gervaise,
13:17wrote an account of the work, which took nine years to complete.
13:22Gervaise makes a really interesting comparison
13:25between the old Romanesque features and the new Gothic ones.
13:30So he talks about the piers there in the choir.
13:34He says that their length was increased about 12 feet.
13:38So he's stressing the new height of Gothic buildings.
13:42And then he describes some of the surface detail.
13:45He says the arches and everything else had been made flat,
13:49as though done with an axe.
13:52But here, in the new building,
13:54there is suitable chisel work on almost all things.
13:58So, again, he's drawing attention to things like the chevrons,
14:01the decorated designs on the capitals.
14:04And the final point, he says,
14:06the walls between the transept and the choir are gone.
14:10Now they seem to meet in one keystone
14:13in the middle of the great vault.
14:16He doesn't go on as the array of columns
14:19that would obstruct the view of the choir in the old Romanesque church.
14:23Instead, we have this wonderful open space.
14:27He concludes that all this, if one wishes to understand it,
14:31will be revealed more clearly by the sight of the church
14:35than by these words.
14:38Gothic had arrived.
14:40Canterbury Cathedral could now claim
14:43both spiritual and architectural pre-eminence
14:47in the religious life of the nation.
14:51The language of Gothic, with its ever more daring pointed arches,
14:56the immense weight of its stone vaults,
14:59distributed downwards in ever bolder fashion.
15:03The carvers of this stonework
15:05were the great innovators of the medieval age,
15:08and here at Canterbury, they transformed the building
15:12into a miraculous reliquary for Beckett's saintly remains.
15:19Next came Wells, with its sculpture-filled west front,
15:24and, at the same time,
15:26it was the first time in the history of architecture
15:29that we had seen a building like this,
15:31with its sculpture-filled west front.
15:36The finest collection of medieval sculpture
15:39to adorn any building in England.
15:44It reminds us of how Gothic had often to rely on the pictorial
15:49in a largely illiterate medieval world.
15:53This front has been called a history of Christendom,
15:57with its figures stretching from Old Testament patriarchs
16:01to the missionaries who brought Christianity to England.
16:17Then came Lincoln,
16:19reputedly the tallest building in medieval Christendom,
16:23until its immense central spire collapsed in 1549.
16:31A reminder that Gothic masons were in the business of taking risks.
16:36But what a glorious interior.
16:38It's been called the most precious piece of architecture
16:42in the British Isles.
16:44Salisbury, with the highest surviving spire
16:48of any English cathedral,
16:50and its tall, skinny nave.
16:53Many medieval cathedrals took centuries to build,
16:57but Salisbury went up in 38 years.
17:03And then, of course, Westminster Abbey.
17:08A building of breathtaking grandeur.
17:13It was entirely rebuilt in the Gothic style,
17:17as the place of coronation and burial for English kings.
17:23Beginning with a spectacular new choir,
17:26which leads to the tomb of the only English king to be canonised,
17:31St Edward the Confessor.
17:35Like so many great Gothic cathedrals,
17:37Westminster's soaring vaults were made possible
17:40by the inventiveness of the Gothic age.
17:43It's engineering at a newly sophisticated level.
17:48On the exterior of the building,
17:50you can see so-called flying buttresses,
17:53which take the weight from above
17:55and skilfully distribute it beyond delicate walls,
17:59pierced by larger and larger windows.
18:05The flying buttress is a signature device of the medieval masons,
18:10allowing for more and more intricacy above,
18:13with less and less substance below.
18:18Stone tracery would grow ever more sophisticated
18:22as early Gothic gave way to a more elaborately decorated Gothic style.
18:29Tracery would dominate not just windows,
18:32but cover every available space.
18:35Three-leaf trefoils, four-leafed quatrefoils,
18:38foliate carving everywhere,
18:41climaxing in extraordinary rose windows,
18:45another flourish in the high Gothic repertoire.
18:59By the beginning of the 14th century,
19:01Britain was a land populated
19:04by some of the finest Gothic cathedrals in Europe.
19:08But it was still largely an imported style.
19:12Now the scene was set for England to reinvent Gothic
19:17in a way that would leave the rest of Europe behind.
19:24All Gothic architecture in the 12th and 13th centuries
19:28was inspired by France,
19:30and the tendency was for everything to become more and more elaborate,
19:35for the tracery and the carvings to become more intricate.
19:39But in the first half of the 14th century,
19:42something very dramatic happened.
19:45Work in England began to assert more simplicity
19:50that brought with it a greater sense of drama.
19:56The invention of a new style
19:58would be provoked by yet another infamous murder.
20:02Edward II had been a disastrous king,
20:05defeated by the Scots and presiding over a divided England.
20:10In the end, his own queen conspired with the barons,
20:15and in autumn 1427,
20:17he was ignominiously murdered at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire.
20:22The only religious institution
20:24prepared to take the body of the discredited king
20:27was the Abbey Church at nearby Gloucester.
20:31A spectacular high Gothic tomb
20:33was squeezed in between the old Romanesque columns of the Abbey Church.
20:41And soon, Gloucester became a major site of pilgrimage...
20:47..as the memory of a hopeless king
20:50metamorphosed into one of tragic martyrdom.
20:55The growing cult of the martyred king
20:58was encouraged by his son and successor, Edward III.
21:03Chance had made Gloucester the burial place of Edward's murdered father,
21:08and here was an opportunity for royal masons
21:12to realise a newly spectacular architectural setting
21:17for the dead king.
21:24Edward III, who would reign for just over 50 years,
21:28was very different to his father.
21:32He had a bold vision for the kingdom.
21:35He would invent a new language of chivalry,
21:38cultivating the memory of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
21:46And invent England's first noble order of chivalry,
21:50the Order of the Garter.
21:53He even chose a new patron saint for the English, St George.
21:59This was a king determined on an England that was a great power in Europe.
22:05A king who embraced a new nationalism
22:08and didn't want a second-hand architecture from France,
22:12but a new style, a national style.
22:16Gone is the fussiness and the over-exaggeration
22:20and the fussiness and the over-emphasis on decoration.
22:24This is Gothic, pared down to its bare essentials,
22:29with a new confidence and daring in the engineering.
22:33So involved was the king with this project
22:36that he sent his own royal masons from London,
22:39over 100 miles away, for this architectural experiment.
22:44The new style would come to be known as English Perpendicular.
22:50Stripped of the over-decoration that had characterised the previous century,
22:55the Perpendicular style would put the emphasis on clean, vertical lines,
23:01drawing the eye ever upwards.
23:05Walls were reduced to almost a grid pattern.
23:09The engineering ever bolder and climaxing at Gloucester,
23:15in the Great East Window, constructed in the 1350s.
23:2072 feet high and 38 feet wide,
23:25it was the largest stained-glass window of the age.
23:30Here in this window, you get a sense
23:32of the changing religious thinking of the time.
23:35The way that the light brings the full-length figures to life,
23:40it really gives them a humanity.
23:43And the way that Christ is depicted there,
23:47looking down at the worshippers below,
23:50it's encouraging.
23:52Like the West Front at Wells, the Great East Window at Gloucester
23:56can be read as a picture of medieval life and thought.
24:00Angels at the top, Mary and Christ in the centre,
24:04with the Apostles to the side,
24:06other angels at the bottom,
24:08and the Virgin Mary at the top.
24:11The Perpendicular style would be the most popular
24:14in the 19th and 20th centuries.
24:17At the top, Mary and Christ in the centre,
24:20with the Apostles to the side,
24:22other saints, kings, nobility and bishops below.
24:28But here, the new architecture marries with a new theology
24:33to emphasise the humanity of Christ.
24:36Mary and Christ may be centrally placed,
24:40but they don't dominate the window.
24:43To the left of Mary, St Peter holds a church
24:47signalling this is the abbey church dedicated to St Peter.
24:52St Cecilia, patron saint of music, faces a heroic St George,
24:57symbol of England's enhanced sense of nationhood.
25:01Such was fear for the safety of Gloucester's precious window
25:05during World War II,
25:07its glass was entirely removed to safe storage.
25:11It remains a miracle of the age
25:14and a signpost to a new perpendicular future.
25:28Pascal Michelaessen is head mason at Gloucester Cathedral.
25:33Pascal, as a mason yourself,
25:36what would you describe as the main features
25:39of this English perpendicular Gothic?
25:42Well, there are many things to say about it,
25:45but I think one of the starting points for me
25:48would be how different it is from the preceding Gothic style,
25:53which was co-existing with the perpendicular.
25:57It's a marked departure.
25:59It's a stylistic revolution.
26:02If you look at the structure of the Gretis window,
26:05you see a lot more horizontal and vertical division.
26:09It's a framework which is new.
26:11Right, so having these horizontals and verticals
26:14allows for more glass, more space to let in light.
26:17Yeah, more surface. Right.
26:19Yeah, because you've got a structure which is much more stable.
26:23And if you have a design which has so many vertical lines,
26:27you can, with a fairly modest height,
26:30suggest, by optical effect, a great height.
26:33You can see it.
26:35It's much less than you have in Bourges or Amiens,
26:39but you have this lofty feeling, and that's created by the design.
26:44Also, the perpendicular architecture is devoid of carving,
26:50and it's very much in contrast with the preceding period,
26:54which precisely is called decorated
26:56because it's got exuberance of carving everywhere.
27:00With much more floriate detailing in the decorated style
27:04and this sort of linear form that perpendicular has.
27:07Yeah.
27:08And why do you think it is that it develops this way?
27:11Why do the English develop this unique form of architecture?
27:15For me, as a foreigner, I think what is very important,
27:20it is a manifestation in architecture of the birth of a nation.
27:25Because what you see in architecture,
27:28you can see it or read it in Chaucer's books,
27:31and it's Englishness being created.
27:34And that's reflected, of course, in the fact that, you know,
27:37the courtly language of French is being replaced by the English vernacular.
27:41So this is an architectural version of that,
27:43French decorated replaced by English perpendicular.
27:47To depart from the decorated is really to cut the ties.
27:53Right.
27:54Because the decorated has still many ties with the preceding architecture
27:58and the French influence.
28:00But now it's, let's get rid of that.
28:03It's cut once for all.
28:05And it's transformed into a very distinct
28:08and different looking space, isn't it?
28:10Yes.
28:11This is revolutionary architecture.
28:13Yes, indeed.
28:14English revolution.
28:16LAUGHTER
28:25Perhaps Gloucester's most striking feature is its remarkable tower.
28:32As masons became more and more adept
28:35at juggling the enormous downward thrust of stone,
28:39so the art of tall towers reached new heights.
28:44MUSIC STOPS
28:53That was such a climb.
28:58But what a view.
29:01Wow.
29:03The perpendicular tower here at Gloucester
29:06rises 225 feet into the air.
29:10And its crowning glory is up here.
29:13These beautiful pinnacles.
29:16They're open.
29:18These finely carved mullions.
29:21I think they're beautiful.
29:23In fact, I think that this tower is one of the most magnificent
29:27of all the Gothic cathedrals in England.
29:34The medieval masons who built Gloucester
29:37had a married faith with mathematics and engineering.
29:41They were men of religion and reason.
29:44To get inside their minds
29:46is one of the most tantalising puzzles of the Gothic age.
29:51MUSIC CONTINUES
30:02Across the country, in Cambridgeshire, is Longthorpe Tower.
30:08The remaining fragment of a fortified manor house.
30:12And the site of some unique paintings.
30:23This really is a hidden gem.
30:26The largest set of surviving medieval domestic wall paintings
30:31in Western Europe.
30:33They give really profound insight into the history of the city.
30:38They give really profound insight into Gothic lives and minds.
30:52These paintings constitute an entire gallery
30:56of medieval preoccupations.
30:59Build up a picture of the complex Gothic mind.
31:04The Thorpe family that were responsible for these paintings
31:08have used these walls as canvases
31:12to express the things that were important to them,
31:15the things that concerned them.
31:17So, over here, you have the king,
31:20balanced out with religious imagery,
31:23like the nativity and the saints.
31:27And on this side, a really unusual image
31:31of the wheel of five senses.
31:34You've got reason in the centre, dressed as a king.
31:37And each of the senses is represented as a different beast.
31:41So, the monkey represents taste,
31:44the vulture, smell,
31:46the spider's web, touch,
31:48the boar, hearing,
31:50and the cock around here, sight.
31:54This sort of symbolism could chime with an idea of medieval man
31:59as superstitious,
32:02wrapped up in a world of esoteric symbolism.
32:05But this is balanced out on the other wall
32:08by this image of Aristotle teaching.
32:12So, we have book learning here,
32:15education factoring into these paintings.
32:21Perhaps the most startling image is one you notice leaving the room,
32:26a reminder that while medieval craftsmen built for eternity,
32:31their own lives were often brief,
32:34and now death was about to deal the Gothic imagination a mighty blow.
32:41Here we have an image from a popular medieval folk tale.
32:45The story goes that three princes encounter three dead men,
32:49shown here by these dark cadavers.
32:53In the climax of the story, the dead say to the living,
32:57as we are, so shall ye be.
33:00These paintings date to around 1340,
33:04but in the next few years,
33:06the spectre of death was to cast a shadow of unprecedented scale
33:11across Europe.
33:15In 1348, a disease arrived in England from Europe,
33:19where it had already wiped out half the population.
33:24The Black Death was spread by the fleas of rats.
33:29The agonising boils were a portent of imminent death.
33:34It seemed like the arrival of Judgement Day itself.
33:40At Arundel Castle in Sussex,
33:43it's possible to see the Gothic imagination taking a darker turn.
33:49CHOIR SINGS
33:57This is the FitzAlan Chapel in Arundel,
34:00and it provides a focused view of attitudes towards life and death
34:05at the height of the Gothic period.
34:08Here's the tomb of John FitzAlan.
34:11He was a Knight of the Garter,
34:13and he fought for Henry VI in the Hundred Years' War with France.
34:17This is traditional in the way that a medieval knight
34:21would be commemorated after death.
34:23He's shown with all his symbols of social standing,
34:27his sword, his armour, his heraldry.
34:31But attitudes towards death in particular were changing.
34:35With the Black Death, there was an increase in sense
34:38that social status and wealth in this life were fleeting.
34:43How do you show that sort of intellectual change visually?
34:47Well, take a look down here.
34:51This is a transi-tomb,
34:53so it acts as a reminder of human mortality.
34:57Here we have John FitzAlan again, but he's cadaverous.
35:02He's emerging from his burial shroud, naked and decaying.
35:07In some transi-tombs, you'd even have rats nibbling at the body
35:11or worms appearing to writhe underneath the surface of the skin.
35:16These gory images, part of the legacy, I think,
35:19of the macabre ideas underlying Gothic.
35:23There's no rats or worms here,
35:26but you can tell that he's supposed to be decaying
35:29because of the sunken cheeks, the hollowed-out eye sockets,
35:34the fact you can count every rib,
35:36and the way he covers his withered modesty.
35:42Why does this monument look like this?
35:45Surely this decaying, ugly corpse
35:49literally undermines the gravitas of John FitzAlan.
35:53Well, it wouldn't have seemed strange at the time.
35:57What this tomb reflects is a gradual change
36:00in the minds of medieval men and women,
36:03accelerated by the effects of the plague.
36:07The decimated nobility was reminded
36:10that they were as vulnerable as ordinary folk.
36:14The reduced peasantry grew all the more powerful
36:18because they were more sought after for their labour.
36:21Now, the Gothic world was beginning to look almost modern.
36:26Its religious framework was also less certain.
36:30Without spiritual leaders for guidance,
36:33people had to see to their souls themselves.
36:37You can see this most clearly in the writings of the English mystics,
36:41men like Richard Roller,
36:43and women like Julian of Norwich and Marjorie Kemp.
36:47They worked outside of the established church.
36:50They were social outcasts
36:52who sought through hallucination, starvation and meditation
36:58a personal and almost physical understanding
37:02of Christ's sufferings and ecstasies.
37:09The plague had shaken the spiritual foundations of the church,
37:13just as it would threaten the very bricks and mortar of the church,
37:18even causing the construction of Winchester Cathedral
37:21to come to a standstill for 25 years.
37:25The spartan nature of perpendicular made it a robust architecture,
37:30even in a time of crisis.
37:33After the plague, with fewer masons around,
37:36architecture would grow sparser still,
37:39but to ever greater visual effect.
37:48The interior at Winchester,
37:51and soaring to the heights with its impressive vaulting.
37:55York Minster, a perpendicular choir,
37:58and a new Great East Window to rival Gloucester's.
38:08St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol,
38:10the most complete perpendicular interior in England.
38:21And the great octagonal lantern at Ely,
38:24a unique piece of construction that flowers upwards towards the heavens.
38:31The second half of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th
38:35saw an explosion of perpendicular.
38:38England's first truly national style of architecture had arrived.
38:45Canterbury too was remodelled,
38:47and today the great perpendicular south window is undergoing restoration.
38:53Eroded stonework is being replaced with newly carved tracery.
38:59It's the work of Canterbury stonemason Emlin Harris and his team.
39:04So this is a diagram of what you guys are up to?
39:08Yes, this is the drawing of the Great South Window,
39:11it's going to be massive,
39:12It's the work of Canterbury stonemason Emlyn Harris and his team.
39:21So this is a diagram of what you guys are up to at the moment then?
39:26Yeah, this is the drawing of the Great South Window.
39:28We're replacing all of the stonework from this point here to what we call the springing line.
39:34It's contentious, you know, there's a lot of people that don't feel comfortable with that amount of stone replacement.
39:40However, the priority is firstly to maintain a safe structure and keep the stained glass in a safe environment.
39:53And everything in pink you've done?
39:55Everything in pink's done.
39:56Still a bit to go.
39:57Yeah, there's still a little bit to go.
40:02Talk me through the process. It starts off with just a bare block.
40:06Yeah, it's a new stone. So Ben and Sam are checking the stone for the dimensions.
40:12They're checking it's square.
40:14Once they've done that, they'll then take the zinc template and they're going to scribe round that shape.
40:21And that is the shape that the finished stone needs to be.
40:24That becomes the core and then you work out everything else.
40:30It looks like a very laborious process, but also I'm surprised how traditional the techniques they're using are.
40:37Yeah, it's exactly the same way that the stone has been marked up since the start of time.
40:42The materials are slightly different. Instead of zinc templates, they would have had wooden templates.
40:47But still just a steel point, just scribe round that shape.
40:54This is Alan and he's very close to finishing actually.
40:58You can see he's just sort of working through his last cavetto.
41:04There's not much in the way of carved decoration or anything like that.
41:07It's all about crisp, straight moulding.
41:13How do you keep these straight lines? You're doing it all by hand.
41:17Yeah, well it's all about practice.
41:20It's all about practice. It's about learning how to use the chisel efficiently and repetitively.
41:29There's a conscious effort to follow your line.
41:35You can see from the sides that there's different curves going on here, aren't there?
41:40That's right. The shape of the moulding can be achieved quite simply with just a change of chisel.
41:46We get all sorts of different tools.
41:49That's just a simple ball nose and that can be used for working your hollows.
41:54And you've really got to think about these things in 3D, haven't you?
41:57You've got this template at the end but it's this idea of it carrying all the way through.
42:01Exactly. One of the struggles with masonry that people can't really get their head around is
42:07you draw in two dimensions but yet you apply all your templates in three dimensions.
42:13So this looks like a much more complex piece.
42:17This is. This is one of the transom heads which is one of the horizontal tyre pieces, if you like.
42:24Supporting the windows above.
42:26Yeah, it takes a lot of the load.
42:29So how long will it take you to work something? I mean this looks so complicated. It must take ages.
42:34The mason wants to be able to achieve something like that in roundabout.
42:38The mason wants to be able to achieve something like that in roundabout 25 days.
42:43Yeah. Such highly skilled work.
42:45And there's something amazing about this, isn't there?
42:47This is going to go back into the medieval building.
42:50You're using the same techniques. It's going to become part of that story again.
42:54The fact that stones are produced by stone masons.
42:57You know, cathedrals, churches, they're all a celebration of craftsmanship.
43:03And, you know, we want to continue that.
43:09MUSIC
43:14The long reign of Edward III came to an end in 1377.
43:19But his successor, Richard, was even more steeped in a Gothic sensibility.
43:29A new artistic exuberance would shape national life.
43:39Climaxing in the creation of the extraordinary Westminster Hall in the 1390s,
43:45the oldest part of the existing Palace of Westminster.
43:54Its roof, with angels carrying the royal coat of arms,
43:58enclosed the largest single span in Europe at the time.
44:09This was a building that would give shape to the monarchy,
44:14Parliament and the legal system.
44:27Richard also put Gothic art to good use in a manual for royal coronations,
44:34known as the Liber Regalis, and referred to today as the Royal Book.
44:46The growing genius of Gothic illustrators and painters
44:50would contribute to a new sense of the divinity of kings.
44:55And Richard commissioned England's greatest surviving Gothic painting,
45:00the Wilton Diptych, an altarpiece that features the king
45:05with the infant Christ and Virgin Mary.
45:12The company of angels surrounding Mary defer to him,
45:16each wearing his personal emblem of the white heart.
45:24It's one of the most exalted images ever made of an English king,
45:29on an altarpiece.
45:33Gothic art was becoming a means of personal communion with God,
45:38even if he weren't a cleric.
45:43An exquisite manuscript from the 1420s shows this vividly.
45:55I'm at the British Library with a facsimile copy
45:59of the incredible Bedford Book of Hours,
46:02and it records an important event,
46:05the marriage of Henry V's brother, John, Duke of Bedford,
46:09to Anne of Burgundy.
46:11A Book of Hours was designed to be used and read by the noble patrons.
46:17It allowed them to emulate the cycle of prayers that monks followed
46:23but, unlike a community of monks,
46:26the readers of this volume could use it for private devotion.
46:31When you look at this image of Anne,
46:34you can see this emphasis on personal piety.
46:37She is in direct communion with the Virgin and child.
46:42It's also interesting that,
46:44at this time of a newly confident English court,
46:48the setting of heaven is surrounded by Gothic architecture.
46:53And when we come to the portrait of John,
46:56you can see that he is also in a private personal communication,
47:03in this case with the patron saint of England, St George.
47:08This object fascinates me
47:10because it brings together military commemoration,
47:14dynastic legacy and personal piety.
47:18These sacred and secular ideas are all expressed in one object.
47:24It really shows the heights that Gothic art had reached.
47:31The late genius of perpendicular
47:33meant that even small spaces achieved a feeling of elevation and light.
47:40And while architecture became ever more sophisticated,
47:43so the depiction of the human being became more rooted in reality.
47:50This is the Beecham Chapel in Warwick.
47:53And from the second you cross the threshold,
47:56you get the sense that this is an intact Gothic space.
48:02There's all of the elements represented here.
48:05You've got architecture, sculpture, metalwork, stained glass, painting.
48:11They're all working together in harmony to commemorate one man,
48:15Sir Richard Beecham.
48:25He was one of the most important military and political figures
48:28of the 15th century.
48:30He died in 1439,
48:33but it would take another 20 years for his vision to be realised
48:37and for the chapel to be completed.
48:41The central effigy of Sir Richard is the consummate Gothic figure,
48:46the formal image of a chivalric knight.
48:49At one level, a military man through and through,
48:53a career soldier who'd fought the Welsh and the French.
48:58But also a man of sensitivity and refinement.
49:03Sir Richard went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land
49:06and was tutor to the infant King Henry VI.
49:11The effigy is life-sized.
49:18It's made of gilt metal,
49:20and that's a medium usually reserved just for royalty.
49:23The whole chapel cost an absolute fortune to make,
49:27£2,481.
49:30And this monument alone cost £720.
49:33I'll put that into perspective.
49:35Richard's family paid four monks to pray for his soul
49:39every day for a year, and they only got £40.
49:43But the monument's not just lavish and beautiful,
49:46it's also important artistically.
49:48The lifelikeness of the hands and the face
49:51anticipate developments that we see later in the Renaissance.
49:55If you look at the vein on the temple,
49:57it almost pulses with lifeblood.
50:06There's a great sense of continuity and consistency
50:11in perpendicular Gothic that I find surprising,
50:14because the 15th century is such a turbulent time.
50:18There's great political turmoil,
50:21but places like this keep getting put up,
50:24and they're statements of permanence, stability,
50:28something lasting in a time of turmoil.
50:31There's a sense of permanence, stability,
50:34something lasting in a time of great change.
50:38As this chapel is being lovingly crafted,
50:41the wars of the roses are raging,
50:44and no-one knows who's going to come out on top.
50:55Of course, the victor was the clever and scheming Henry Tudor.
51:02Shown here on the left, who, as Henry VII,
51:06founded a new royal dynasty
51:08that went on to give us Henry VIII and Elizabeth I,
51:12arguably a golden age in English history.
51:19It would also signal the end of the medieval age of Gothic.
51:27But not before one last flowering,
51:29possibly the most beautiful of them all.
51:34There is the magnificent rebuilding of St George's Chapel at Windsor,
51:38home to the Order of the Garter.
51:46Then the astounding perpendicular of King's College Chapel in Cambridge,
51:52the largest fan-vaulted ceiling in the world,
51:55likened to the art of lace-making.
51:59And, of course, the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey,
52:04built in the first half of the 16th century.
52:16Few great art moments in history
52:19have dominated the fabric and sensibility of a nation
52:22for as long as Gothic.
52:24But Gothic architecture,
52:26which had put so much emphasis on structure and engineering,
52:30would begin to stray from its original integrity.
52:33For all its gravity-defying brilliance,
52:36the ceiling in the Henry VII Chapel
52:39departs from the previous genius of medieval masons.
52:47The fan-vaulted ceiling here is a masterpiece,
52:51but it is a flawed one.
52:53Traditionally, the fan would spring out of the top of the pier
52:58at the side of the wall,
53:00but here there are pendants set two metres in from the wall,
53:04and the fan appears to be springing out of those.
53:07Now, that's impossible. They're not supported by anything.
53:10It creates this gravity-defying illusion,
53:14but there's this arch that seems quite incongruous,
53:18breaking up the apsidal end from the nave.
53:21It really does upset the flow of the ceiling.
53:24It comes directly between two of the pendants.
53:27It seems it's here because, while the building was being constructed,
53:31the masons had to almost make it up as they were going along.
53:35They must have felt that the ceiling needed additional support at that point.
53:42And if the ceiling above seems to signal the end of an era,
53:46so does the monument below.
53:52The impressive tomb of Henry VII and his queen, Elizabeth of York,
53:58is a significant departure from the Gothic.
54:06It was commissioned by Henry VII's son, Henry VIII,
54:10and made by the artist Torriciano,
54:13who's credited as having brought the Renaissance style
54:16to the English for the first time.
54:19We can see that not just in the beautiful surface decoration
54:23and the figures around the tomb,
54:26but also in the details of the effigies of Henry VII and Elizabeth.
54:31This tomb heralds the dawning of a new era.
54:39Torriciano's figures signalled a new age of realism.
54:44The figures of Henry and Elizabeth look domestic
54:48rather than chivalrous and courtly.
54:51The fluid movement in the fabric of their clothes
54:55replaces the straight and formal lines of Gothic sculpture.
55:00Cuddly cherubs sit alongside the more usual heraldic beasts.
55:06But the real blow to Gothic would come in the form of the English Reformation.
55:14Henry VIII made himself head of the Church in England,
55:18overturning the authority of the Pope.
55:24It would herald an age of vandalism against Gothic art and sculpture,
55:29the language of the Catholic Church.
55:33Sacred paintings of saints would be scratched out,
55:37sculptures smashed.
55:40The great monastic institutions were abolished.
55:47Gothic architecture survived, but often ruinous and denuded of detail.
55:55And with a new reverence for the remains of ancient Rome,
56:00classical architecture, with its symmetry and sense of rigid proportion,
56:05would become fashionable.
56:10ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS
56:15At the Palace of Hampton Court,
56:17Gothic fabric and classical detail even competed for the upper hand.
56:30Eventually, classicism would win out,
56:33dominating English culture for 300 years.
56:39ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES
56:49The Gothic Age, above all the genius of perpendicular,
56:53England's first national style, seemed to be over.
56:59ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES
57:10ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES
57:16But it wasn't quite the end of the story.
57:20We tend to traditionally think of Gothic ending with Henry VIII.
57:25During his long and turbulent reign,
57:29the classically inspired Renaissance style that had grown up in Italy
57:33set down roots firmly in England.
57:36History is fluid.
57:38There's rarely a moment where people unanimously wake up one day
57:42and think, oh, that's the end of one era and the beginning of another.
57:46There's always evolution and development.
57:49Gothic evolves and develops.
57:52True, events like the Reformation and the Enlightenment
57:55knock it off its pedestal as the defining architectural style
57:59of the high medieval period.
58:01But when Augustus Pugin and Charles Barry
58:05sought a new architecture of power and national pride
58:09for the Houses of Parliament, they returned to Gothic
58:13because English perpendicular Gothic was the physical setting
58:18for the birth of England as a nation.
58:21ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES
58:29Your Dead To Me is the history podcast for people who don't like history
58:34and those who do.
58:36Join Greg Jenner to learn and laugh.
58:38Listen via BBC Sounds.