• DOI:10.2307/750783
• Corpus ID: 195029297

The Rose-Window

@article{Dow1957TheR,
  title={The Rose-Window},
  author={Helen J. Dow},
  journal={Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes},
  year={1957},
  volume={20},
  pages={248 - 297}
}

• Helen J. Dow
• Published 1 July 1957
• Art
• Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes

The rose-window is a consistent feature of the Gothic churches in the liede-France,' but not of those in Normandy; and there has been a tendency, therefore, to regard it as an un-Gothic interruption in the total design of the church front. For Professor Erwin Panofsky, the French rose-window contrasted with its architectural setting as strongly as a Non with a Sic, until the intrusion was masked by the development of Flamboyant tracery.2 The rosewindow, at first sight, seems to stand apart from the underlying interdependence of all the other elements in the edifice; the circular outline has always been felt to require no external assistance to complete its simple intrinsic perfection. At the same time, this makes it the most assertive feature in the fagade; aided by its filling of tracery-spokes, the rose seems to revolve upon itself, gathering energy and centripetal attention into its own centre. On the west front of Rheims cathedral (P1. 14e), for example, the repeated use of lancet arcades, steeply pitched porch-gables, and heavy upright buttresses strengthening the flanking towers, builds up a continuously rising movement. Against this pattern of ascending lines, the rose is entirely self-contained. The interruption of the vertical movement performs, in fact, a carefully calculated aesthetic function, both emphasizing the ascending direction of the straight lines, and slowing their motion by concentrating attention upon the rose. This window thus becomes a steadying influence, gathering the aesthetic energy generated by all the other fagade members into one focal point. Inside the church, this effect is strengthened by the fact that the rose is a window; like a great visual centre of gravity, it suspends our gaze, as it were, midway between Heaven and Earth. Ultimately, as Panofsky has shown, the development of Flamboyant tracery destroyed the contrast which the original Gothic rose had formed with its architectural setting.3 Masked by the criss-cross of intricate carving, the window lost its outstanding character and merged into the general plane of the facade, so that its function as the centre of gravity in the design of the Gothic church front disappeared with the style to which it had belonged. Elsewhere than in the Ile-de-France, the rose-window is found most frequently in Italian churches. There, it is also the focal point of the fagade; yet, except where the Cistercian Order introduced the purely French form, the effect is fundamentally different. Since the Italians remained more sympathetic to the classical moderation and balance of antique art, they generally retained a composure in their church facades with which the circular form harmonized. No ascending force is suddenly checked because no ascending