Gothic Revival Architecture - Romanticism and Nationalism

Romanticism and Nationalism

French neo-Gothic had its roots in a minor aspect of Anglomanie, starting in the late 1780s. In 1816, when French scholar Alexandre de Laborde said "Gothic architecture has beauties of its own", the idea was novel to most French readers. Starting in 1828, Alexandre Brogniart, the director of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory, produced fired enamel paintings on large panes of plate glass, for Louis-Philippe's royal chapel at Dreux. It would be hard to find a large, significant commission in Gothic taste that preceded this one, save for some Gothic features in a handful of jardins à l'anglaise.

The French Gothic revival was set on sounder intellectual footings by a pioneer, Arcisse de Caumont, who founded the Societé des Antiquaires de Normandy at a time when antiquaire still meant a connoisseur of antiquities, and who published his great work on Norman architecture in 1830 (Summerson 1948). The following year Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame appeared, in which the great Gothic cathedral of Paris was at once a setting and a protagonist in a hugely popular work of fiction. Hugo intended his book to awaken a concern for the surviving Gothic architecture, however, rather than to initiate a craze for neo-Gothic in contemporary life. In the same year that Nôtre-Dame de Paris appeared, the new French monarchy established a post of Inspector-General of Ancient Monuments, a post filled in 1833 by Prosper Merimée, who became the secretary of a new Commission des Monuments Historiques in 1837. This was the Commission that instructed Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to report on the condition of the abbey of Vézelay in 1840. Following this, Viollet le Duc set to restore most of the symbolic buildings in France – Notre Dame de Paris, Vézelay, Carcassonne, Roquetaillade castle, Mont Saint-Michel, Pierrefonds, Palais des Papes à Avignon . . . . When France's first prominent neo-Gothic church was built, the Basilica of Saint-Clotilde, Paris, begun in September 1846 and consecrated 30 November 1857, the architect chosen was, significantly, of German extraction, François-Christian Gau (1790–1853); the design was significantly modified by Gau's assistant, Théodore Ballu, in the later stages, to produce the pair of flêches that crown the west end.

Meanwhile, in Germany, interest in the Cologne Cathedral, which had begun construction in 1248 and was still unfinished at the time of the revival, began to reappear. The 1820s Romantic movement brought back interest, and work began once more in 1842, significantly marking a German return of Gothic architecture.

Because of Romantic nationalism in the early 19th century, the Germans, French and English all claimed the original Gothic architecture of the 12th century as originating in their own country. The English boldly coined the term "Early English" for Gothic, a term that implied Gothic architecture was an English creation. In his 1832 edition of Notre Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo said "Let us inspire in the nation, if it is possible, love for the national architecture", implying that Gothic is France's national heritage. In Germany with the completion of Cologne Cathedral in the 1880s, at the time the world's tallest building, the cathedral was seen as the height of Gothic architecture. Other major completions of Gothic cathedrals were of Regensburger Dom (with twin spires from 1869–1872), Ulm Münster (with 161 meter tower from 1890) and St. Vitus Cathedral (1844–1929).

In Belgium, a 15th-century church in Ostend burnt down in 1896. King Leopold II supported its replacement by a cathedral-like church after the also Neo-Gothic Votive Church in Vienna and the Saint Peter's and Saint Mary's High Cathedral in Cologne: the Saint Peter's and Saint Paul's Church. In Mechelen, the largely unfinished building drawn in 1526 as the seat of the Great Council of the Netherlands, finally got built in the early 20th century strictly following Rombout II Keldermans's Brabantine Gothic design, and became the 'new' north wing of the City Hall.

In Florence, the Duomo's temporary façade erected for the Medici-House of Lorraine nuptials in 1588–1589, was dismantled, and the west end of the cathedral stood bare again until 1864, when a competition was held to design a new facade suitable to Arnolfo di Cambio's structure and the fine campanile next to it. This competition was won by Emilio De Fabris, and work on his polychrome design and panels of mosaic was begun in 1876 and completed in 1887, creating Neo-Gothic facade. In Indonesia, the Jakarta Cathedral was begun in 1891 and completed in 1901 by Dutch architect Antonius Dijkmans; while in the Philippines, the San Sebastian Church, designed by Arch. Genaro Palacios and Gustave Eiffel was consecrated in 1891.

In Scotland, while a similar Gothic style to that used in England was adopted by figures inclusing Frederick Thomas Pilkington (1832–98) in secular architecture it was marked by the re-adoption of the Scots baronial style. Important for the adoption of the style in the early 19th century was Abbotsford House, the residence the novelist and poet, Sir Walter Scott. Re-built for him from 1816, it became a model for the modern revival of the baronial style. Common features borrowed from 16th and 17th century houses included battlemented gateways, crow-stepped gables, pointed turrets and machicolations. The style was popular across Scotland and was applied to many relatively modest dwellings by architects such as William Burn (1789–1870), David Bryce (1803–76), Edward Blore (1787–1879), Edward Calvert (c. 1847–1914) and Robert Stodart Lorimer (1864–1929) and in urban contexts, including the building of Cockburn Street in Edinburgh (from the 1850s) as well as the National Wallace Monument at Stirling (1859–69). The rebuilding of Balmoral Castle as a baronial palace and its adoption as a royal retreat from 1855-8 confirmed the popularity of the style.