Chartres Cathedral

Movement: Gothic Gothic is easiest to grasp as a building problem, and Chartres shows the solution. After a fire in 1194 left little more than the west towers, facade and crypt, the main body was rebuilt by about 1220, fast for a medieval cathedral. Flying buttresses carry the weight of the high vaults outside the walls, so the walls can open up into huge windows, and most of the original stained glass survives. Height and colored light were the whole point: a church that feels lifted toward heaven. What came next: painters in Flanders and Italy began turning that devotion toward real space and real bodies.