Rayonnant style

For more information on Rayonnant style, visit Britannica.com.

Term applied to a particular phase of French Gothic architecture (c. 1230s-1300s) by 19th-century historians who were attempting to divide Gothic into distinct sub-styles based on the changing forms of window tracery. Its general acceptance into the vocabulary of architectural historians resulted from the writings of Enlart, Lasteyrie, Focillon and (most important in English) Robert Branner. Originally intended to refer to the radiating spokes of the enormous rose windows characteristic of the period (e.g. Saint-Denis Abbey, the transepts of Notre-Dame, Paris), 'Rayonnant' came to designate a phase of architectural design and construction involving reduced mass and scale: the prodigious structural and spatial speculations of High Gothic (e.g. the cathedrals of Chartres, Bourges, Amiens and Beauvais) were ignored in favour of concentrating on the delicate two-dimensional effects to be gained through the application of tracery patterns, not just to windows, but also to building structures, to give a brittle, calligraphic texture to the surface of the building. (The term is also applied to a type of ceramic decoration popular in 18th-century France that used radiating symmetrical motifs.)

See the Abbreviations for further details.

The middle phase of French Gothic architecture in the 13th and 14th cent., characterized by radiating lines of tracery.