World Architecture Images- Late French Gothic or Flamboyant style

Essential Architecture- Search by style Late French Gothic or Flamboyant style

The north tower of Chartres Cathedral	The rose window of Amiens Cathedral	The west facade of Rouen Cathedral

Church of St. Maclou, Rouen.	The south transept of Beauvais Cathedral	Palais de Justice at Rouen

Flamboyant style, the final development in French Gothic architecture that reached its height in the 15th cent. It is characterized chiefly by ornate tracery forms that, by their suggestion of flames, gave the style its name. Although these free-flowing patterns in lines of double curvature originated in the English Decorated Gothic (early 14th cent.), the French adopted them as the basis of a lavish style quite different from the English original. Flamboyant works exhibit pronounced freedom and exuberance, created by high, attenuated proportions, accumulated and elaborate traceries, and many crockets, pinnacles, and canopied niches. It is believed that the style first appeared in the west facade of the cathedral at Rouen (1370); its culmination is in the Church of St. Maclou, Rouen (1437–50). Other conspicuous examples are the Palais de Justice at Rouen, begun 1482; the west chapels of Amiens Cathedral; the northern spire of Chartres; and the south transept of the cathedral at Beauvais.

FLAMBOYANT STYLE, the term given to the phase of Gothic architecture in France which corresponds in period to the Perpendicular style. The word literally means "flowing" or "flaming," in consequence of the resemblance to the curved lines of flame in window tracery. The earliest examples of flowing tracery are found in England in the later phases of the Decorated style, where, in consequence of the omission of the enclosing circles of the tracery, the carrying through of the foliations resulted in a curve of contrary flexure of ogee form and hence the term flowing tracery. In the minster and the church of St Mary at Beverley, dating from 1320 and 1330, are the earliest examples in England; in France its first employment dates from about 1460, and it is now generally agreed that the flamboyant style was introduced from English sources. One of the chief characteristics of the flamboyant style in France is that known as "interpenetration," in which the base mouldings of one shaft are penetrated by those of a second shaft of which the faces are set diagonally. This interpenetration, which was in a sense a tour de force of French masons, was carried to such an extent that in a lofty rood-screen the mouldings penetrating the base-mould would be found to be those of a diagonal buttress :situated 20 to 30 ft. above it. It was not limited, however, to internal work; in late 15th and early 16th century ecclesiastical architecture it is found on the facades of some French cathedrals, and often on the outside of chapels added in later times.