Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Role of Light in Gothic Architecture

When you look at a gothic cathedral you notice that light dose not necessarily play the role you would expect. Light in a cathedral is not just to let light in. The stained glass allows some light in yes, but at the same time the light becomes colorful and there for the light that enters has a mysterious quality to it. Light was not just used to illuminate the interior but rather to allow light to pass through the different colored glass and allow what some call a divine light to enter the cathedral. Make sense when you think about it, because the stained glass helped to provide a visual history for the people who could not read. What better way to get someone’s attention then to create something that while allowing some light to enter would also cause people to just stand and look at the different colors of the glass. What this also provides is something that separated them from the earlier roman churches of the time. Looking at a gothic cathedral today we see something that is both beautiful and intriguing. The sheer fact that someone spent all of that time to design and build something of that magnitude is mind-blowing. Cathedrals were looked at as being palaces of god on earth at the time so why not make them as big a grandiose as technology allowed. I mean sure now Hollywood has managed to turn them into the dark creepy places that things that go bump in the night would love to live in, but in reality they are some of the most beautiful works of architecture ever created.

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