Solid and Void in Fourteenth - and Fifteenth-century Art and Architecture

Occasionally it is possible to identify an artistic personality from the middle ages whose works show real inventiveness and the power to have effected change. Michael of Canterbury was one such example. He became one of the most favoured architect-masons working in royal service during the first part of the fourteenth century. He first appears as designer for one of the twelve crosses made to commemorate the funeral journey from Harby (Notts.) to London for Edward I’s queen, Eleanor, in 1290. He is believed to have been involved with the design of some of the royal and other notable tombs at Westminster that make such a significant contribution to the aesthetic effect of the interior. But much more far-reaching in terms of influence was his later work for Edward III and Philippa as the architect of St Stephen’s chapel in the palace of Westminster, begun in 1292 but its construction continuing until almost the middle of the fourteenth century.52 This building, incorporating decorative elements in the form of sculpture and painting, tracery and glass as integral rather than additional to its fabric, both continued a long-standing trait in English building yet also moved it on to a new style. Most innovatory was its external decoration, in the extension of window-tracery mullions to merge with blind tracery attached to the surrounding masonry, creating an all-over vertically emphasized lace-like pattern blending solid and void. It came to exemplify elite taste and its enduring popularity is attested by its continued reappearance for more than a hundred years. For example, the Beauchamp chapel at Warwick (1441-52), one of the best-documented surviving buildings of the late middle ages, ultimately still owes the form of its decorative exterior to the aesthetic characteristics invented at St Stephen’s chapel (plate 24.5).

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Plate 24.5 Exterior elevation of Beauchamp chapel, St Mary’s, Warwick, 1441-52. (Photo: A. F. Kersting)

Increasing the transparency and surface decoration of buildings required a combination of technical and aesthetic invention. Early experiments included the Octagon at Ely cathedral (1322), an elaborate glazed wooden lantern vault uniting the upper central parts of the cathedral in replacement for the collapsed crossing tower.53 The 1330s saw a number of new choir designs in the west of England, each of which allowed narrower passages, greater verticality and more light into the centre of the church. At Wells cathedral the upper gallery or triforium of the choir elevation is effectively made up of a series of ogee-gabled niches linked to tall clerestory windows by vertical mullions. The choir of Gloucester, a signature building for what was later defined as the ‘Perpendicular style’, was probably designed by Thomas, the son of Michael of Canterbury, and is a tour de force of the blending of solid and void through vertical linking of sculpture and glass. In the extension of tracery from wall surface to gallery to window, the mass of masonry disappears into an ordered yet decorative system of arcaded panels with vertical mullions and shafts. These lead up to a lierne-vaulted canopy (see Glossary below) studded with gilded angel bosses. The stained glass in the east window acted as a display of war-heroes and saints, probably commemorating the battle of Crecy but also having the aesthetic effect of dissolving the solidity of the end of the building in a wall of coloured light of unprecedented scale.54 An even more influential development took place at Gloucester in the cloister, built between 1351 and 1364, with the first appearance of a fan-vaulted roof, representing a technical as well as an aesthetic landmark. Tracery and infill were united in single blocks of masonry giving the impression of greater unity and smoothness than was possible before. It was some years before the form of vault was attempted for a wide span over a central vessel, the most famous example being over the central vessel of the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, by the architect John Wastell (from c.1490).