Flamboyant

Flamboyant (from French flamboyant, "flaming") is the name given to a florid style of late Gothic architecture in vogue in France from about 1350 in France until superseded by Renaissance architecture during the early 16th century, and mainly used in describing French buildings. The term is sometimes used of the early period of English Gothic architecture usually called the Decorated Style; the historian Edward Augustus Freeman proposed this in a work of 1851. A version of the style spread to Spain and Portugal during the 15th century. It evolved from the Rayonnant style and the English Decorated Style and was marked by even greater attention to decoration and the use of double curved tracery. The term was first used by Eustache-Hyacinthe Langlois (1777-1837), and like all the terms mentioned in this paragraph except "Sondergotik" describes the style of window tracery, which is much the easiest way of distinguishing within the overall Gothic period, but ignores other aspects of style. In England the later part of the period is known as Perpendicular architecture. In Germany Sondergotik ("Special Gothic") is the more usual term.