Talk:Tracery

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 August 2018 and 22 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mcstratton. Peer reviewers: JasmineHolian.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:34, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Islamic tracery?

I removed this section: the scholarly sources I consulted all define tracery as a peculiar development of Gothic architecture. While the Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition, uses the term "tracery" occasionally, it has no such entry, and the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three, is entirely lacking any mention of it. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:12, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

This is true to a great degree however there are those scholars who have said plainly that gothic architecture is strongly derived from Islamic architecture. And on the point of tracery the fact is :that the earliest tracery in Europe is found on Islamic monuments. They may not have called it tracery but the point is that from an architectural and artistic perspective they are the same :thing. And if these scholars of architecture don't see fit to acknowledge these facts then it is most likely due to a bias against admitting any influence from Islamic culture. For example:

• 
  Tracery Arches in Batalha_Monastery
• 
  Complex Arch from Aljafería

:I need to find the book written by an English scholar from a few hundred years back who said that much of gothic originated with the muslims.Big-dynamo (talk) 00:37, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

The typical forms of Gothic tracery derive from the evolution of window mullions associated with the shift from plate to bar tracery - part of the general aesthetic and technical developments we now characterise as the transition from 'High' to 'Rayonnant' gothic. Even when applied as blind tracery or in microarchitecture, the origins of these forms in fenestration is fundamental and generally recognised. By contrast, the Islamic decorative forms you cite are all derived from "surface" decoration - typically used since the early days of the Abassid Caliphate to embellish soffits and domes. Even the fractal arch forms so popular with the Umayyads in Spain derive mainly from muqarnas - so again a form of surface decoration. In other words, from an architectural and artistic perspective the features you mention are NOT the same thing as tracery. Islamic surface decoration has much in common with the Romanesque forms of surface decoration but again this is quite different to Gothic tracery. Also, I would be cautious of relying too much on examples from Spain and Portugal. For all its richness, Iberian gothic never had much influence on the rest of the continent, which tended to respond more to developments in the Ile de France. StuartLondon (talk) 08:38, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I know this is the point of view of "the experts" but I believe that much of this is a bit biased. It is a known fact that in Spain much of the Christian architecture borrowed directly from the Muslims including the Muslims use of multilobed arches and carvings in their Mosques and other buildings, along with pointed arches which originated in the East for example Mesopotamia and Persia. The Muslims and the Persians and Indians were the ones at that time moving the mathematics forward to the point where such structures and decorative motifs became possible using advanced geometric techniques. But of course modern European scholars will admit the Muslim mathematical influence but omit the architectural influence. Not to mention that much of what you call Gothic actually originated in the cathedrals of Armenia hundreds of years earlier, which was later combined with decorative elements of Muslims and Asians. The Muslims did not call it tracery because they did not speak English. The term generally used to refer to the tradition of piercing window openings with delicate openwork is called Mashrabiya in Arabic. But I do concede that most mainstream scholarship is not going to admit to the things that I posted hence violating Wiki rules for citations. And also note the much of the "tracery" styles seen in Gothic are found in the complex interlaced tiers of arches in the Great Mosque of Cordoba which are structural elements used to support high openings in a structure, whether it be for a window a wall or interior of a building and derives from the Roman use of such elements in things like aqueducts.

• 
  Great mosque of Cordoba built in 10th century. Note the tracery in the windows using Islamic Geometric Motifs.
• 
  Note the compound multilobed arches presaging those seen in later Gothic works.
• 
  More Islamic architecture
• 
  Openwork in Islamic Windows from Aljaferia in Spain
• 
  Early gothic architecture from Ani Cathedral in Armenia
• 
  Outside Shot of Ani Cathedral
• 
  Indian sculptural treatments from Khajuraho temple telling religious stories on the surface of the temple)

Big-dynamo (talk) 13:23, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Christopher Wren and "Saracenic" origin of Gothic

I found the references to the noted english architect Christopher Wren who notably claimed that most of Gothic had a "Saracenic" character. He was mainly referring to some of the architectural elements but also the style of ornamentation. Hence:

"Modern Gothic, as it is called, is deduced from a different quarter; it is distinguished by the lightness of its work, by the excessive boldness of its elevations, and of its sections; by the delicacy, profusion, and extravagant fancy of its ornaments. The pillars of this kind are as slender as those of the ancient Gothic are massive: such productions, so airy, cannot admit the heavy Goths for their author; how can be attributed to them a style of architecture, which was only introduced in the tenth century of our era? several years after the destruction of all those kingdoms which the Goths had raised upon the ruins of the Roman empire, and a time when the very name of Goth was entirely forgotten: from all the marks of the new architecture it can only be attributed to the Moors; or what is the same thing, to the Arabian or Saracens; who have expressed in their architecture the same taste as in their poetry; both the one and the other falsely delicate, crowded with superfluous ornaments, and often very unnatural; the imagination is highly worked up in both; but it is an extravagant imagination; and it has rendered the edifices of the Arabians (we may include the other Orientals) as extraordinary as their thoughts. If any one doubts of this assertion, let us appeal to any one who has seen the mosques and palaces of Fez, or some of the cathedrals in Spain, built by the Moors: one model of this sort is the church of Burgos; and even in this island there are not wanting several examples of the same: such buildings have been vulgarly called Modern Gothic, but their true appellation is Arabic, Saracenic, or Moresque. This manner was introduced into Europe through Spain; learning flourished among the Arabian all the time that their dominion was in full power; they studied philosophy, mathematics, physics, and poetry. The love of learning was at once excited, in all places that were not at too great distance from Spain these authors were read, and such of the Greek authors as they had translated into Arabic, were from thence turned into Latin. The physics and philosophy of the Arabians spread themselves in Europe, and with these their architecture: many churches were built after the Saracenic mode; and others with a mixture of heavy and light proportions: the alteration that the difference of the climate might require was little, if at all, considered. In most southern parts of Europe and in Africa, the windows (before the use of glass) made with narrow apertures, and placed very high in the walls of the building, occasioned a shade and darkness within side, and were all contrived to guard against the fierce rays of the sun, yet were ill suited to those latitudes, where that glorious luminary shades its feebler influences, and is rarely seen but through a watery cloud" (see Grose, 1808).

From the following article on MuslimHeritage: http://muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=385

Further, there was a fierce debate within the English and European scholarly community about the origins of Gothic in the time period leading up to the 19th and 20th century where a purely Neoclassical argument based on "northern" origins for this style.

In this respect Romantic translations of Spanish 'frontier ballads' coincided with a variety of eighteenth-century British endeavours to discover, approach and incorporate different cultural traditions, and in particular the emergence of cultural theories that, on the one hand, asserted the pure, Gothic and Northern, descent of British civilization and, on the other, theories that preferred to define it as mixed, an elaboration based on different contributions. The latter position was part of those theories that found the origins of Gothic architecture, the generic term denoting the national style of ancient buildings, not so much in an indigenous evolution elaborated together with other Northern cultures, but as an import from Muslim countries through the intermediary action of Moorish Spain. The origins of Gothic Buildings were heavily debaded throughout the eighteenth century, and Sir Christopher Wren was the single most important voice to define this architectural style as Oriental and his authoritative judgement stated that it had been brought back by the Crusaders. The controversy on the origins of the Gothic style lasted well into the 1820s and particularly raged around the turn of the century after the publication of one of the most popular early books on the Gothic, Essays on Gothic Architecture(1800), which reprinted four essays by Warton, Benthan, Grose and Milner. Among those essays by respected and qualitifed antiquarians, it was Francis Grose's which supported the 'Sarascenic' and Spanish-Moorish theory against Milner's objections.

I will see if I can dig up more substantial sources for the influence on Tracery. Big-dynamo (talk) 13:00, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

tracery: ροδόπλεκτο, ροδόπτυχο, γοτθίπλεκτο (grecophonically)

References