Reassessing “Lateness:” Issues of Periodization and Style in Late Medieval Architecture


This panel engages with notions of lateness and what constitutes lateness in the architecture of the medieval period (c. 1400-c. 1600), and aims to situate Late Gothic architecture within the larger narratives of art history. In some cases, medieval architectural forms and styles persist well into the seventeenth century, posing problems to existing periodizations in the field. How might we begin to explain these examples? Although modern scholarship has adhered to progress models of stylistic change that presuppose a nascent, fully-realized, and late style in architecture, the issues surrounding constructs of “lateness” in architecture remain to be fully considered from methodological and theoretical standpoints. How has the concept of lateness been applied to the study of medieval architecture and its ornamentation? How might these considerations begin to revise historiographic bias in the field? The session features four papers that address historiographic, methodological, and theoretical concerns related to the study of Late Gothic architecture between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries in Western Europe, East-Central Europe, and the Eastern Mediterranean. The individual papers in this session focus on case studies and larger historiographic concerns, dealing with issues of the relationships between monumental architecture and other forms of artistic expression, the role of ornament as bearer of cultural meanings, the coexistence of Gothic and antique features and the attribution of meaning, as well as the development and functions of eclectic styles with roots in both Gothic structures and classical forms.

Field of Study:






Chairs:
Alice Isabella Sullivan,Getty/ACLS - alice.isabella.sullivan@gmail.com and Kyle G. Sweeney,Winthrop University - sweeneyk@winthrop.edu

The Decorative Program of the Treasury at St. Jacques in Dieppe
Abby L. McGehee, Oregon College Of Art & Craft