Court style

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Court style. Earliest phase of the Rayonnant style of French Gothic, closely associated with the reign of King Louis IX (1227–70). It was characterized by the dissolution of walls in favour of huge areas of windows subdivided by thin, wire-like tracery, the piercing of the wall of the triforium-gallery with windows, and the introduction of masses of colonnettes corresponding to the ribs in the vault. The most glorious examples of the Court style are Ste-Chapelle, Paris (1243–8), the Collegiate Church of St-Urbain, Troyes (begun 1262), and the east end of Sées Cathedral, Normandy (c.1270).

Bibliography

Branner (1965);
Grodecki (1986);
D. Watkin (1986)

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