Notre Dame de Rouen. The façade of the Gothic Church in France. Photographer: Hippo1947. Licence: SHUTTERSTOCK.
Showing posts with label Beauvais Cathedral. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beauvais Cathedral. Show all posts

Tuesday 5 February 2013

Beauvais Cathedral (Part Two).



Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopaedia,
unless otherwise stated.



File:Picardie Beauvais4 tango7174.jpg


Français : Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais, Oise, Picardie, France. Horloge astronomique.
English: Beauvais Cathedral, Oise, Picardie, France. Astronomical clock.
Photo: September 2008.
Source: Own work.
Author: Tango7174
(Wikimedia Commons)


In the race to build the tallest Cathedral in the 13th-Century, the builders of Saint-Pierre de Beauvais pushed the technology to the limits. Even though the structure was to be taller, the buttresses were made thinner in order to pass maximum light into the Cathedral. In 1284, only twelve years after completion, part of the Choir Vault collapsed, along with a few Flying Buttresses. It is now believed that the collapse was caused by resonant vibrations caused by high winds.

The accompanying photograph shows lateral iron supports between the Flying Buttresses; it is not known when these external tie rods were installed. The technology would have been available at the time of the initial construction, but the extra support might not have been considered necessary until after the collapse in 1284, or even later.


File:Picardie Beauvais3 tango7174.jpg


Français : Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais, Oise, Picardie, France. 
Horloge à carillon du XIVè siècle.
English: Beauvais Cathedral, Oise, Picardie, France. 
14th-Century chiming clock.
Photo: September 2008.
Source: Own work.
Author: Tango7174
(Wikimedia Commons)


In the 1960s, the tie rods were removed; the thinking was that they were disgraceful and unnecessary. However, the oscillations created by the wind became amplified, and the Choir partially disassociated itself from the Transept. Subsequently, the tie rods were re-installed  but this time with rods made of steel. Since steel is less ductile than iron, the structure became more rigid, possibly causing additional fissures.





Lateral Supports of Flying Buttresses.
Photo: March 2007.
Source: Own work.
Author: Tvbanfield
(Wikimedia Commons)


The floor plan shows that the original design included a Nave that was never built. Thus, the absence of shouldering support, that would have been contributed by the Nave, contributes to the structural weakness of the Cathedral.

With the passage of time, other problems surfaced, some requiring more drastic remedies. The North Transept now has four large wood-and-steel lateral trusses at different heights, installed during the 1990s, to keep the Transept from collapsing. In addition, the main floor of the Transept is interrupted by a much larger brace that rises out of the floor at a 45-degree angle. This brace was installed as an emergency measure to give additional support to the Pillars that, until now, have held up the tallest Vault in the world.


File:Beauv kated vitraze DSCN4397.JPG


English: Beauvais Cathedral. Stained-Glass.
Česky: Katwedrála v Beauvais, vitráže
Photo: August 2010.
Source: Own work.
Author: Sokoljan
(Wikimedia Commons)


These temporary measures will remain in place until more permanent solutions can be determined. Various studies are under way to determine with more assurance what can be done to preserve the structure. Columbia University is performing a study on a three-dimensional model, constructed using laser scans of the building, in an attempt to determine the weaknesses in the building and remedies.

Several of the Chapels contain Mediaeval stained glass windows, made during the 13th- through to the 15th-Centuries. In a Chapel close to the Northern Entrance, there is a Mediaeval clock (14th-15th-Century), probably the oldest fully-preserved and functioning mechanical clock in Europe. In its vicinity, a highly complicated astronomical clock with moving figures was installed in 1866.


THIS CONCLUDES THE ARTICLE ON BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL.


Sunday 3 February 2013

Beauvais Cathedral (Part One).


Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopaedia,
unless otherwise stated.




File:Beauvais Cathedral SE exterior.jpg


Beauvais Cathedral from the South-East.
Photo: July 2005.
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0
(Wikimedia Commons)



The Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais (French: Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais) is an incomplete Roman Catholic Cathedral located in Beauvais, Northern France. It is the seat of the Bishop of Beauvais, Noyon and Senlis. It is, in some respects, the most daring achievement of Gothic architecture and consists only of a Transept (16th-Century) and Choir, with Apse and seven polygonal Apsidal Chapels (13th-Century), which are reached by an Ambulatory.

The small Romanesque Church of the 10th-Century, known as the Basse Œuvre, much restored, still occupies the site destined for the Nave.


History

Work was begun in 1225, under Count-Bishop Miles de Nanteuil, immediately after the third in a series of fires in the old wooden-roofed Basilica, which had reconsecrated its Altar only three years before the fire; the Choir was completed in 1272, in two campaigns, with an interval (1232–38) owing to a funding crisis provoked by a struggle with Louis IX. The two campaigns are distinguishable by a slight shift in the axis of the work and by what Stephen Murray characterises as "changes in stylistic handwriting." 

Under Bishop Guillaume de Grez, an extra 4.9 m was added to the height, to make it the highest-vaulted Cathedral in Europe. The vaulting, in the interior of the Choir, reaches 48 m in height, far surpassing the concurrently-constructed Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Amiens, with its 42 m (138 ft) Nave.

The work was interrupted in 1284 by the collapse of some of the vaulting of the recently-completed Choir. This collapse is often seen as a disaster that produced a failure of nerve among the French masons working in Gothic style; modern historians have reservations about this deterministic view. Stephen Murray notes that the collapse also "ushers in the age of smaller structures associated with demographic decline, the Hundred Years War, and of the 13th-Century."




English: Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais, France.
Français : Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais, Oise, Picardie, France.
Photo: September 2008.
Source: Own work.
Author: Tango7174
(Wikimedia Commons)


However, large-scale Gothic design continued, and the Choir was rebuilt at the same height, albeit with more Columns in the Chevet and Choir, converting the vaulting from quadripartite vaulting to sexpartite vaulting. The Transept was built from 1500 to 1548. In 1573, the fall of a too-ambitious 153-m (502 feet) Central Tower stopped work again. The Tower would have made the Church the second-highest-structure in the world at the time (after St. Olaf's Church, Tallinn). Afterwards, little structural addition was made.

The Choir has always been wholeheartedly admired: Eugène Viollet-le-Duc called the Beauvais Choir "the Parthenon of French Gothic."



File:Beauvais, Cathédrale F 204.jpg


Beauvais Cathedral, France.
This building is classé au titre des Monuments Historiques
It is indexed in the Base Mérimée, a database of architectural heritage maintained by the French Ministry of Culture, under the reference PA00114502.
Photo: September 2011.
Source: Own work.
Author: PMRMaeyaert
(Wikimedia Commons)


Its façades, especially that on the South, exhibit all the richness of the Late-Gothic style. The carved wooden doors of both the North and South Portals are masterpieces, respectively, of Gothic and Renaissance workmanship. The Church possesses an elaborate astronomical clock in Neo-Gothic taste (1866) and tapestries of the 15th- and 17th-Centuries, but its chief artistic treasures are stained-glass windows of the 13th-, 14th-, and 16th-Centuries, the most beautiful of them from the hand of Renaissance artist, Engrand Le Prince, a native of Beauvais. To him, also, is due some of the stained-glass in St-Etienne, the second Church of the town, and an interesting example of the transition stage between the Gothic and the Renaissance styles.

During the Middle Ages, on 14 January, the Feast of Asses was annually celebrated in Beauvais Cathedral, in commemoration of the Flight into Egypt.


PART TWO FOLLOWS.


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