03 — ARTWORK
Exterior view
- MEDIUM
- Photo
- TYPE
- Religious
PALETTE
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COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
The collegiate church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux in Châlons-en-Champagne (formerly Châlons-sur-Marne) is about 40 kilometres southeast of Reims, and its choirthe part of a church interior, usually raised and set apart from the rest of the church, reserved for the clergy to pray together, or for choral singing. Since Carolingian times, "choir" has been the word for the part of the central nave of the church extending over the crossing (the place where nave and transept intersect), and including the apse (a niche in the wall, roofed with a half dome) that often stands at the end of this area. shows considerable affinity with that of Saint-Remi in Reims, notably in its elevation and in the arrangement of its radiating chapelschapels leading off from the ambulatory, and arranged in a semi-circular fashion.. Notre-Dame-en-Vaux can be seen as an imitation of those churches, such as Saint-Remi, in which differences of architectural style were used to demonstrate a venerable past. But it also marks the end of the development of stylistically heterogeneous Early GothicGothic, which may well have originated with Alberti as a derogatory term and which certainly corresponds to Vasari's 'maniera tedesca' ('German style'), is properly the descriptive term for an artistic style which achieved its first full flowering in the Ile de France and the surrounding areas in the period between c. 1200 and c. 1270, and which then spread throughout northern Europe. It is characterized by the hitherto unprecedented integration of the arts of sculpture, painting, stained glass and architecture which is epitomized in the great cathedrals of Chartres, Amiens, and Reims or in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. In all the arts the predominantly planar forms of the Romanesque are replaced by an emphasis on line. There is a transcendental quality, whether in the soaring forms of the pointed arches or in the new stress on the humanity of Christ, which similarly distinguishes it from the preceding Romanesque style. In thinking of Nicola (d. c. 1284) or Giovanni Pisano (d. after 1314) there is same danger of forgetting what had happened in French sculpture half a century or more earlier, and likewise it is hard to remember that the spectacular achievements of early Renaissance art are a singularly localized eddy in the continuing stream of late gothic European art. By northern European standards few Italian works of art can be called gothic without qualification, and the story of 13th and 14th century Italian architecture is as much one of resistance to the new style as of its reception, whether directly from France or through German or central European intermediaries. In sculpture and in painting, the Italian reluctance to distort the human figure, conditioned by a never wholly submerged awareness of the omnipresent antique heritage, gives a special quality to the work of even those artists such as Giovanni Pisano or Simone Martini who most closely approached a pure gothic style. Nevertheless, the vitalizing role of Northern gothic art throughout the early Renaissance and the period leading up to it should never be underestimated. The artistic, like the cultural and commercial, interaction was continuous and much of the Italian achievement is incomprehensible if seen in isolation. It is not merely at the level of direct exchanges between one artist and another, or the influence of one building; painting, manuscript or piece of sculpture upon another, that the effects are to be felt. The streaming quality of line which is so characteristic of Brunelleschi's early Renaissance architecture surely reflects a sensitivity to the gothic contribution which is entirely independent of, and lies much deeper than, the superficial particularities of form. The counterflow of influence and inspiration from South to North must likewise not be underrated. In particular, the contribution of Italian painters from Duccio and Simone Martini onwards is central to the evolution of the so-called International Gothic style developing in Burgundy, Bohemia and north Italy in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. type of church, in which the new had been developed out of a critical reappraisal of the old. Admittedly, there were later "composite" churches of this kind, but on the whole during the second half of the 12th century there was a marked shift towards stylistically more uniform churches.
Notre-Dame-en-Vaux is a basilicaa church building, usually facing east, with a tall main nave and two or four side aisles of lesser height. There may also be a transept between the nave and the choir, which is reserved for the clergy. Originally, the basilica was an ancient Greek administrative building, and the Romans used this form for markets and law courts; it then became a place of assembly for the early Christians, and thus a church. intersected by a deep transeptsection of a church at right-angles to the nave and in front of the choir. terminated by a chevetan apse, typically with ambulatory and radiating chapels. with radiating chapels with two slender columns in the mouth of each chapela small separate place for worship, either part of a large church or a separate building.. Twin towers nestle in the eastern end. The building has a superficial unity with arcadeA series of arches supported by columns, piers or pillars. In a blind arcade the arches are built into a wall. and spacious galleryan upper story, similar to a tribune, running along the side of a building and open on one side to the interior; in a church (basilica) above the side aisles, over the ambulatory (central-plan building) and also over the west end. The gallery was used to keep certain groups of worshippers apart (women, noblemen). and triforiumspace above the nave arcade, below the clerestory. The triforium became general in the Romanesque period..
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-rcb118f9a7ba3fd,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Exterior view by ARCHITECT, French},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-12},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/architect-french-rdae55df3ad7702/exterior-view-rcb118f9a7ba3fd},
urldate = {2026-09-12},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-12. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
