The difficulty with many anatomies of Gothic art is that they become involved in attributing a meaning to Gothic that it is incapable of sustaining. It is not, for one thing, a medieval word; instead, it is an invention of the 16th century attributed, as it were, posthumously, by historians after the Gothic style had been trampled into virtual insensibility by the Italian Renaissance. The word refers to the Teutonic tribes who were thought to have destroyed Classical Roman art and were thus considered barbarians. But nobody in the 13th century thought of himself as Gothic. The fact is that ...(100 of 41048 words)