“Gothic” denotes an art of building that developed in Île-de-France during the 1130s, and spread throughout Europe up through the sixteenth century.
Opus Francigenum: those are the words Burkhard von Hall used, acknowledging the French origins of gothic architecture, to refer in 1280 to the Church of Saint Peter at Wimpfen im Tal, in Germany. “Gothic” denotes an art of building that developed in Île-de-France during the 1130s, and spread throughout Europe up through the sixteenth century. This movement, which had multiple variations, was long seen in a negative light. The reference to the Goths was itself originally pejorative: introduced in the French language by François Rabelais ( Pantagruel, 1533), it was used by Giorgio Vasari in 1550 to refer to the supposed period of artistic decline between Antiquity and the Renaissance. Gothic art was nevertheless reevaluated beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, a process that was also international in scope.