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    Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Invention of the Gothic
    Unavailable
    Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Invention of the Gothic
    Unavailable
    Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Invention of the Gothic
    Ebook495 pages8 hours

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

    By Philip Ball

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “A lively, open-ended study of the building of Chartres Cathedral. . . . Ball puts the fun back in medieval scholasticism.” —Los Angeles Times

    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 eminently fascinating work, author Philip Ball makes sense of the visual and emotional power of Chartres and brilliantly explores how its construction—and the creation of other Gothic cathedrals—represented a profound and dramatic shift in the way medieval thinkers perceived their relationship with their world.

    Beautifully illustrated and written, filled with astonishing insight, Universe of Stone embeds the magnificent cathedral in the culture of the twelfth century—its schools of philosophy and science, its trades and technologies, its politics and religious debates—enabling us to view this ancient architectural marvel with fresh eyes.

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 17, 2009
    ISBN9780061970078
    Unavailable
    Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Invention of the Gothic
    Author

    Philip Ball

    Philip Ball is a freelance writer and broadcaster, and was an editor at Nature for more than twenty years. He writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and has written many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and wider culture, including H2O: A Biography of Water, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour, The Music Instinct, and Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. Ball is also a presenter of Science Stories, the BBC Radio 4 series on the history of science. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford and as a physicist at the University of Bristol. He is the author of The Modern Myths. He lives in London.

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