Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Invention of the Gothic

"[A] lively biography of Chartres Cathedral . . . Ball's account of its construction reveals fascinating details." —The New Yorker

Chartres Cathedral, south of Paris, is revered as one of the most beautiful and profound works of art in the Western canon. But what did it mean to those who constructed it in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—and why was it built at such immense height and with such glorious play of light, in the soaring manner we now call Gothic?

In this work, Aventis ...