The irony of the derogatory slight issued by Vasari from which the Gothic style derives its name is that the Gothic period’s towering reach for the heavens and the technology it employed in that ascension makes the Romanesque look primitive. I’m not placing on the Romanesque the same contempt that Vasari placed on the Gothic, I only want to set the record straight that if we are going to label a style “brutish”, it would be more suiting a title for the Romanesque and not the Gothic.
When I think about the biggest difference between Romanesque and Gothic architecture I conjure an unmistakable imagine in my mind. It is a side by side comparison of a semicircular barrel arch and that of a pointed arch, or ogival. A seemingly small design discrepancy such as this represents a seismic shift in Architecture. The combing of two circles, which served as the geometry for barrel arches, in creating an ogival is a symbolic act. The unique geometry that was created represents taking the geometry and knowledge of existing architecture and expanding upon it to take architecture to, quite literally, new heights. Aside from the distinct aesthetic shift–and the way in which a ogival leads the eyes upward as a result of the pointedness where the voissours meet the keystone–ogives were among the technology Gothic architecture employed to build higher since it possessed a more efficient load-bearing capability. This concentration on using technology to build higher, as well as design to lead the eyes upward (as in the upward-pointing arrow that is the keystone) encapsulates the Gothic mission. The Romanesque, on the other hand, did not share the same enthusiasm for height, but rather for massiveness. Make no mistake, the Gothic style had an equal focus on making architecture more massive, but it sought to do achieve massiveness in the vertical plane, whereas Romanesque massiveness was more confined to the horizontal plane, resulting in an incredibly heavy-looking, fortified appearance. That heaviness is evident in the poches found in Romanesque floor plans which are intimidating in thickness. In the Gothic style, those poches are more slender while still allowing greater height thanks to the advent of pointed arches and ribbed vaults compared to the Romanesque groin, or barrel vaults, as well as the implementation of buttresses, most notably flying buttresses. In my eyes there is nothing brutish or primitive about the Gothic style, it’s quite the opposite really. Instead, I see the Gothic style as the extrapolation of a style which was confined in its extreme weight and massiveness inextricably with the ground into one which allowed humans to reach ever closer to the heavens. That is architecture that soars.