The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order, 3rd Edition
The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order, 3rd Edition by Otto Georg Von Simson
English | June 21, 1988 | ISBN: 0691099596, 0691018677 | PDF | 364 pages | 115 MB
English | June 21, 1988 | ISBN: 0691099596, 0691018677 | PDF | 364 pages | 115 MB
"The Gothic Cathedral is the most stimulating and comprehensive work on the subject to date. . . . If the cathedrals are to be understood, Mr. von Simson rightly declares, they must be seen not in the light of twentieth-century esthetic observation, but of twelfth-century religious experience, through which the supernatural permeated every aspect of human existence. . . . The resulting interpretation of the monuments is a critical tour de force."–-Allan Temko, The New York Times Book Review
This essay seeks to understand Gothic architecture as an image, more precisely, as the representation of supernatural reality. To those who designed the cathedrals, as to their contemporaries who worshiped in them, this symbolic aspect or function of sacred architecture overshadowed all others. To us, it has become the least comprehensible.