Gothic Sculpture Plastic and Symbolic Values “Northern Gate of Charter Church as a paradigm”

Abstract

Gothic art is considered as an art which was flourished especially in Western during the middle ages. Like other previous arts, Gothic art was employed and dedicated for church throughout Europe concerning the themes and topics addressed. This imposed on the Gothic art certain standards and plastic values of religious and symbolic nature. Statues were totally rejected at the beginning of the spread of Christianity because of historic, philosophic and religious reasons. However, sculpture strongly appeared during the period of Gothic Art which lasted between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries and took the place of icons and moral paintings (frescoes) which were previously essential. Gothic art became more naturalistic as it visualized human figures with symbolism that was the aim or the unique style of the precedent Byzantine and Romanesque arts.

The present study started from the foresaid points to demonstrate how to combine and reconcile the real and symbolic trends, to show whether one trend dominated the other, and explore the role of sculpture: Was the role limited to ornamentation and decoration of architecture, or extended to structural aspects of architecture?  Therefore, sculptures available at the northern entrance of Charter Church of France were adopted as appropriate and distinguished samples to be studied and analyzed to achieve this study.