Michał Kurzej

Revival, Continuation or Inertia? Early Modern Church Architecture and Medieval Tradition

In church architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the continued use of spatial arrangements, structural devices and ornamental motifs of late-medieval origin has often been observed. However, the cross-rib vaults, pointed arches, and window tracery employed at that time have been considered, in the first place, as a singularity, so unusual that it called for some symbolic explanation, and the phenomenon has been interpreted as a conscious reversal to the past. Regrettably, documentary evidence that might corroborate such a view is missing, whereas there are reasons indicating that such ‘singularities’ could be explained much more straightforwardly. In most of Central Europe, until the mid-seventeenth century, churches dating from medieval period vastly outnumbered those whose forms were modelled, to various extent, on the repertoire of Classical architecture, and must have been considered as examples of the then still current, that is, modern art of building. Theoretical substantiation of such a hypothesis can be found in the writings of Philibert de l’Orme and Hans Vredeman de Vries, who developed a timeline of the history of architecture that was different from the one adopted in Italy. In it they clearly recognised continuity between their times and a period that later came to be known as the Late Middle Ages. Thus, the results of more in-depth research on architecture north of the Alps in the period in question suggest that utmost caution should be exercised when ascribing individual artworks to the retrospective current, since, more often than not, one is likely to encounter instances of continuation of the then still current motifs, or indeed, of inertial endurance of motifs to which no alternative devices were available.

Author's email:

michal.kurzej@uj.edu.pl

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54759/ART-2025-0305



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