Editing Rose window (section)

=== Further development ===
From the building of Chartres the dimensions of the rose window began to increase with the development of more elaborate window styles associated with [[Gothic architecture]]. By the middle of the 13th century the rose had attained the greatest possible size – the entire width of the [[nave]] or transept, as seen in the transept roses at St Denis and Paris.

In the facades of St Denis, Chartres, Mantes, Laon and Paris, the rose was put under a circular arch. The next important development in its use for the Gothic style was to put it under a pointed arch, as was done in the [[Notre-Dame de Reims]] (after 1241), in the [[transept]]s as well as in the later roses of the [[facade]]. This form probably stemmed from the now destroyed St Nicaise, also in Reims.

The rose window was often placed above a row of vertical lights as the apex of the composition, the small corner "spandrels" between the rose and lower tier being filled by smaller lights of rose form, as in the transepts of St Denis and Notre Dame.

The last step in evolution of the Gothic style was to set the rose into a tier of vertical lights, of staggered height and surmount it by a tapering pointed light so that it became the centre of a vast window composition, covering the whole end of the transepts, as in [[Rouen Cathedral|Rouen]] or [[Beauvais Cathedral|Beauvais]] Cathedrals. This sort of elaborate composition can also be seen at the east end of [[Milan Cathedral]].

Rose windows were also set into square windows, the spandrels being pierced and filled with smaller lights as at [[Notre Dame de Paris|Paris]], 1257, or unpierced with sculpture, the form more common in Italy as at [[Spoleto]] and also seen in the north transept of [[Westminster Abbey]] and at [[Strasbourg Cathedral]], (see pictured above).