Changes in clothing styles in the middle ages were not very dramatic until the mid-13th century when the tunic styles that had dominated both men’s and women’s wardrobes began to diversify and manifest unique designs.  A dramatic shift in artwork during this same medieval period, when fashion essentially began its history, reflects the changes of those times.  What Giorgio Vasari, the Renaissance art historian, classified as Gothic Art offers us images caught in time of a movement and energy that encapsulated the end of the middle ages.

Gothic art evokes the great cathedrals of France and Germany to the modern viewer, but Gothic sculpture, and particularly the forms explicit in the Gothic aesthetic, tell a lot about the time period’s aspirations and visions of itself.  If Gothic architecture was reflective of people’s Christian ideals, with spires reaching for the heavens and stained glass windows channeling God’s light through the chambers of the church, then Gothic sculpture was charged with the restlessness and flamboyance of the period.  Whereas the Romanesque aesthetic in sculpture that preceded it was marked by rigidity and stoic beauty, Gothic sculpture broke free literally and figuratively.

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Gothic sculptures seen decorating the facades of Gothic cathedrals were novel in that they were no longer set into the walls of the buildings but actually stood apart as three-dimensional entities in their own power. With this freedom from structure came also a freedom in style. The flow and draping of clothing on sculptured figures from this time period suddenly manifest a firmness combined with vibrancy that suggest something irrepressible. One has to imagine that this was true of the spirit of the time period, too. Towards the end of the 12th and during the 13th centuries, Europe was opening up and through pilgrimages, the crusades and burgeoning textile and commercial industries, with more

established trade routes, the world was becoming more accessible to the common villager. The vibrance of the period and the newfound luxury of textiles and adornment that would help establish the romance of the courtly lifestyle can be seen in Gothic sculptures, whether images of the Virgin Mary or images of contemporary historical figures. Gowns are shown in full, enveloping folds and charged with a new dimensionality that paid tribute to the mounting changes in medieval society and to the fantasy of courtly life.

IMAGES:
*Gothic Sculpture, French Virgin and Child c. 1330, Stone Notre-Dame, Paris
*Naumberg Cathedral; Margrave Ekkehard of Meissen and his wife Uta West Choir, Naumburg Cathedral, ca. 1249-1255

Tags: 12th century, 13th century clothing, Basic Sallet Helmet, Battle Bardiche, Classic Medieval Sword, gothic, Gothic aesthetic, Gothic Art, Gothic Sculpture, medieval, Medieval Breastplate Display, Medieval European trade, Medieval History, Medieval Store, middle ages, The Crusades, The Renaissance