Editing Gothic architecture (section)

== West front ==
[[File:Notre-Dame de Paris 2013-07-24.jpg|thumb|Notre-Dame de Paris – deep portals, a rose window, balance of horizontal and vertical elements. Early Gothic]]
Churches traditionally face east, with the altar at the east, and the west front, or façade, was considered the most important entrance. Gothic façades were adapted from the model of the Romanesque façades.{{Sfn|Renault|Lazé|2006|p=35}} The façades usually had three portals, or doorways, leading into the nave. Over each doorway was a [[Tympanum (architecture)|tympanum]], a work of sculpture crowded with figures. The sculpture of the central tympanum was devoted to the Last Judgement, that to the left to the Virgin Mary, and that to the right to the Saints honoured at that particular cathedral.{{Sfn|Renault|Lazé|2006|p=35}} In the early Gothic, the columns of the doorways took the form of statues of saints, making them literally "pillars of the church".{{Sfn|Renault|Lazé|2006|p=35}}

In the early Gothic, the façades were characterized by height, elegance, harmony, unity, and a balance of proportions.{{Sfn|Harvey|1974|p=146}} They followed the doctrine expressed by Saint [[Thomas Aquinas]] that beauty was a "harmony of contrasts".{{Sfn|Harvey|1974|p=146}} Following the model of Saint-Denis and later Notre-Dame de Paris, the façade was flanked by two towers proportional to the rest of the façade, which balanced the horizontal and vertical elements. Early Gothic façades often had a small rose window placed above the central portal. In England the rose window was often replaced by several lancet windows.{{Sfn|Renault|Lazé|2006|p=35}}

In the High Gothic period, the façades grew higher, and had more dramatic architecture and sculpture. At Amiens Cathedral ({{Circa|1220}}), the porches were deeper, the niches and pinnacles were more prominent. The portals were crowned with high arched gables, composed of concentric arches filled with sculpture. The rose windows became enormous, filling an entirely wall above the central portal, and they were themselves covered with a large pointed arch. The rose windows were pushed upwards by the growing profusion of decoration below. The towers were adorned with their own arches, often crowned with pinnacles. The towers themselves were crowned with spires, often of open-work sculpture. One of the finest examples of a [[Flamboyant]] façade is [[Notre-Dame de l'Épine]] (1405–1527).{{Sfn|Ducher|2014|p=52}}

While French cathedrals emphasized the height of the façade, English cathedrals, particularly in earlier Gothic, often emphasized the width. The west front of Wells Cathedral is 146 feet across, compared with 116 feet wide at the nearly contemporary Amiens Cathedral, though Amiens is twice as high. The west front of Wells was almost entirely covered with statuary, like Amiens, and was given even further emphasis by its colors; traces of blue, scarlet, and gold are found on the sculpture, as well as painted stars against the dark background on other sections.<ref>Dearmer, Percy, ''Bell's Cathedrals - the Cathedral Church of Wells: A Description'' (1898). Section "The West Front", loc. 55, from full text on [[Project Gutenberg]]</ref>

Italian Gothic façades have the three traditional portals and rose windows, or sometimes simply a large circular window without tracery plus an abundance of flamboyant elements, including sculpture, pinnacles and spires. However, they added distinctive Italian elements. as seen in the façades of [[Siena Cathedral]] ) and of [[Orvieto Cathedral]], The Orvieto façade was largely the work of a master mason, [[Lorenzo Maitani]], who worked on the façade from 1308 until his death in 1330. He broke away from the French emphasis on height, and eliminated the column statutes and statuary in the arched entries, and covered the façade with colourful mosaics of biblical scenes (The current mosaics are of a later date). He also added sculpture in relief on the supporting contreforts.{{Sfn|Martindale|1993|p=173}}

Another important feature of the Italian Gothic portal was the sculpted bronze door. The sculptor [[Andrea Pisano]] made the celebrated bronze doors for [[Florence Baptistry]] (1330–1336). They were not the first; Abbot Suger had commissioned bronze doors for Saint-Denis in 1140, but they were replaced with wooden doors when the Abbey was enlarged. Pisano's work, with its realism and emotion, pointed toward the coming Renaissance.{{sfn|Martindale|1993|pp=170–175}}

<gallery widths="200" heights="200" perrow="5">
File:Wells Cathedral West Front Exterior, UK - Diliff.jpg|[[Wells Cathedral]] (1176–1450). Early English Gothic. The façade was a Great Wall of sculpture
File:0 Amiens - Cathédrale Notre-Dame (1).JPG|[[Amiens Cathedral]], (13th century). Vertical emphasis. High Gothic
File:Salisbury Cathedral 3 (5691354924).jpg|[[Salisbury Cathedral]] – wide sculptured screen, lancet windows, turrets with pinnacles. (1220–1258)
File:Strasbourg Cathedral Exterior - Diliff.jpg|[[Strasbourg Cathedral]] (1275–1486), a façade entirely covered in sculpture and tracery
File:Saints-Michel-et-Gudule Luc Viatour.jpg|[[Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula]] in Brussels, a towered highly decorated façade
File:Basilique Notre-Dame de l'Epine.JPG|Flamboyant façade of [[Notre-Dame de l'Épine]] (1405–1527) with openwork towers
File:Facciata del Duomo di Orvieto.JPG|[[Orvieto Cathedral]] (1310–), with polychrome mosaics
File:St. Anne's Church Exterior 3, Vilnius, Lithuania - Diliff.jpg|Late Gothic façade of [[Church of St. Anne, Vilnius|Church of St. Anne]] in Vilnius (ca. 1500)
</gallery>{{clear}}