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Columnar niche or shrine applied decoratively to a larger building. The word is a diminutive from the Latin word aedes (‘temple’). Summerson traced its application to Gothic architecture and drew attention to the importance of playing at being in a house for all small children; he claimed that this kind of play has much to do with the aesthetics of architecture and leads ultimately to the use of the aedicula. The earliest surviving examples of aediculae are shop-signs from Pompeii, such as that showing Mercury or Hermes emerging from a small building. Later aediculae appear extensively in wall paintings of the Fourth Style (c. ad 20–c. 90; see Rome, ancient §V 2.). Later still, aediculae were often used in the architecture of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire; they consisted of columns or pilasters flanking a niche for statuary, with a pediment above, as in the stage-building of the theatre at ...

(b Alava, c. 1480; d Salamanca, Sept 3, 1537).

Spanish architect. After an initial training in Burgos, an important centre of Gothic architecture towards the end of the 15th century, he moved to Salamanca, where his patrons included Alonso de Fonseca, Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela and Patriarch of Alexandria, and subsequently his son, Alonso de Fonseca y Acevedo, Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela and then of Toledo. Alava worked during a period of transition from the Gothic to the Renaissance style and made a synthesis of the two that was not entirely successful. Even his late churches have a Gothic structure, with rib vaults and buttresses terminating in pinnacles. His façades are embellished with early Renaissance motifs, such as friezes, grotesques and medallion busts. In his use of the orders, he was notably uninhibited by conventional forms and proportions. In 1505 Alava built the sacristy for the chapel of Salamanca University, and he may have contributed to the university façade (...

[Aleši, Andrija; Alexii, Andreas; Andrea di Niccolò da Durazzo]

(b Dürres, c. 1425; d Split, 1504).

Dalmatian sculptor and architect of Albanian birth. Although he is recorded in 1435 at Zadar as a pupil of Marco di Pietro da Troia, his most important artistic influence was the Late Gothic style of Giorgio da Sebenico, with whom he worked in 1445 on Šibenik Cathedral and in 1452 at Ancona on the Loggia dei Mercanti. Between 1448 and 1460 Alessi also controlled his own workshop at Split and Rab. In 1466 he began work on his masterpiece, the baptistery at Trogir, which was finished in 1467. The chapel is rectangular in plan, covered with a barrel vault with acute angled coffers; its richly decorated interior is an eclectic blend of Late Gothic and Renaissance elements. The sculpture shares these characteristics: the Baptism of Christ over the entrance, with its elongated figures and complex drapery patterns, derives from Giorgio da Sebenico’s mannered style, while St Jerome in the Desert...

(b ?London, c. 1470; d ?London, 1532).

English goldsmith. He was the son of a London goldsmith and was the most successful goldsmith working at the Tudor court; his work bridged the transition between the Gothic and the Renaissance styles. He was an official at the Mint from 1504 to almost the end of his life, his appointment possibly facilitated by his marriage to Elizabeth, granddaughter of Sir Hugh Bryce (d 1496), Court Goldsmith to Henry VIII. In 1524 Amadas became the first working goldsmith to become Master of the Jewel House to Henry VIII, an office he retained until 1532, supplying spangles, wire and ribbons to the court. In the 1520s his orders included a large amount of plate for gifts to foreign ambassadors; he also supplied a number of New Year’s gifts for the court. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was one of Amadas’ most important clients, and Amadas supplied him with a number of lavish objects. Other clients included ...

German city in Saxony. It is particularly known for its Late Gothic hall church, the Annenkirche, and for its pottery.

Heinrich Magirius

The church was built after the foundation of the city in 1496/7 by Herzog Georg of Saxony, following the discovery of silver near by. Herzog Georg endowed the church and personally appointed the architects. The building, which was integrated into the regular plan of the city, was probably begun in 1499 by Conrad Pflüger, the highest-ranking Master of the Works in the Duchy. On Pflüger’s death in 1508 direction of the works was taken over by Peter Ulrich von Pirna (d 1513–14); the roof was built in 1512, the piers from 1514 to 1517. In 1515 Jacob Haylmann took over as Master of the Works, and the galleries and the imaginative vaults with patterns of loops and stars were built following his designs. The transept-like annexe to the south side, built in ...

Spanish family of architects. Juan de Badajoz (i) (b ?Badajoz; d León, 31 Aug 1522) probably came from the region of Extremadura. He worked in León virtually all his life, and his works are exclusively Late Gothic in style. In 1498 he was appointed master builder of León Cathedral, where his most individual work was the chapter library (1505; now St James’s Chapel), an extremely flamboyant example of the Gothic style. In 1508 he was called to Oviedo Cathedral to design the elegant tower (executed by local builders). In 1513 he replaced the semicircular presbytery of the Romanesque church of S Isidoro el Real, León, with a rectangular chapel of more ample proportions, and similar in style to his cathedral library. His son Juan de Badajoz (ii) [el Mozo] (b León, c. 1498; d León, c. 1560) assisted him at León Cathedral, and succeeded him as chief master builder in ...

English family of architects Sir Charles Barry most admired ancient Greek architecture but is best remembered as the architect of the New Palace of Westminster (from 1834) in London, executed in the Gothic style with the help of A. W. N. Pugin (see Palace of Westminster (London), §3...

(fl London, 1865–82).

English furniture designer and manufacturer. He may have been trained by the Gothic Revival architect and furniture designer J. P. Seddon, whose work certainly influenced his first published design, a davenport in a geometric Reformed Gothic style, in the Building News of 1865. That year he also advertised a ‘New Registered Reclining Chair’, made by Marsh & Jones of Leeds, whose London showrooms were near his own premises off Cavendish Square. In 1865 Marsh & Jones supplied the Yorkshire mill-owner Sir Titus Salt with a large group of furniture, including a bedroom suite, and in 1867 with the case of an Erard grand piano (all Leeds, Temple Newsam House) designed by Bevan; described at the time as ‘medieval’, the pieces are decorated with geometric marquetry ornament. Bevan designed a bookcase for the Manchester firm James Lamb, which was shown in the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867, and by the following year was also designing for ...

(fl 1820–50).

American architect. There is evidence that Bond was trained by Solomon Willard. Certain of Bond’s designs suggest the Greek Revival approach that Willard brought from Washington, DC. Bond’s style moved between Gothic Revival and a Neo-classical heaviness. In the Salem City Hall of 1836–37 the two-storey Greek Revival façade shows his carefully proportioned details. An example of Gothic Revival is St John’s Episcopal Church and Rectory (1841), Devens Street, Boston, which has a rather heavy granite façade dominated by a square tower with a battlemented roof-line; there are large quatrefoil windows in the walls below. In the same year Bond was called to Oberlin College in Ohio to design First Church, which had to be a Greek Revival design. He worked on Lewis Wharf (1836–40; later remodelled), Boston, where certain walls reflect his attraction to boldly massed granite surfaces. Bond’s best-known buildings during his life were at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. These included Gore Hall (...

(b Perugia, c. 1420; d Perugia, July 8, 1496).

Italian painter. He was almost certainly trained in Perugia between 1430 and 1440, where a Late Gothic style was still dominant. Subsequently he was influenced by Fra Angelico, whose polyptych (Perugia, G.N. Umbria) for S Domenico, Perugia, was commissioned in 1437, and more importantly by Domenico Veneziano, who worked in that city c. 1438. The influence of Domenico Veneziano and of Gentile da Fabriano can be seen in Bonfigli’s earliest surviving work, a polyptych (now dismembered), which had a central panel of the Virgin and Child (El Paso, TX, Mus. A.), shown against a densely wooded background, and St Sebastian and a Bishop Saint (Monserrat, Mus.) on one wing. Another wing (untraced) shows St Bernardino of Siena and St Anthony Abbot. Bonfigli is first documented on 7 March 1445, when he undertook to paint a Virgin and Child with Two Angels (untraced) for a chapel near S Pietro, Perugia. A votive fresco of ...

(b New York, Jan 13, 1927; d New York, Nov 26, 1973).

American scholar of Gothic architecture. He majored in classics at Yale University and served in the US Army in Europe (1945–6), where he encountered the great monuments of Gothic architecture. He completed his doctoral degree at Yale, also studying medieval architecture and archaeology at the Ecole des Chartes and the Institut d’Art et Archéologie in Paris, and engaging in excavations at Bourges Cathedral (1950–52). His doctoral dissertation on Bourges was directed by Sumner McKnight Crosby.

Branner taught for a year at Yale (1952) before accepting a teaching position at the University of Kansas (1954). Between 1957 and his death he taught in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, New York, with a brief spell at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. As a teacher, Robert Branner energized the study of medieval art in a vital and lasting way.

Although he is remembered principally as a most prolific scholar of Gothic architecture, Branner’s considerable list of publications includes topics in medieval manuscript production, architectural drawing, painting, luxury arts, and monumental sculpture. Each of Branner’s three great books on Gothic architecture brought a different approach. ...

Castle in Breda, north Brabant, Netherlands. It is one of the first examples of monumental Renaissance architecture in the Netherlands, constructed at a time (1530s) when large buildings there were still dominated by the Late Gothic style from Brabant. A fortress had stood on the site since the 13th century. In 1515–21 Count Henry III of Nassau (1483–1538) commissioned a gallery on the curtain wall and a portal, both with ornate pediments (destr.), which was the first known piece of Renaissance architecture in the Netherlands. In 1536 Henry initiated more thoroughgoing alterations, with the intention of replacing the Gothic castle with a modern palace. The design comprised a rectangular layout around a large courtyard overlooked by an arcade. From the courtyard a stately, covered double staircase led to the double-height great hall on the first floor, which occupied the entire west wing. The ground floor below this hall was originally an open hall of columns. This design was finally completed in ...

(b Hatford, Wantage, Berks, March 30, 1825; d London, Oct 7, 1901).

English architect and designer. Along with G. F. Bodley and J. L. Pearson he was the major designer of Gothic Revival churches in the later Victorian period. He began his training in London in 1847 and entered the Royal Academy Schools two years later, but his contacts in Oxfordshire with important High Church patrons such as John Butler, the vicar of Wantage, and key architect members of the Ecclesiological Society, including G. E. Street and William White, are of greater significance. As was the case with Street and White, secular commissions were to occupy only a minor part in Brooks’s career.

Brooks set up as an independent architect in London in 1852. Little happened, however, until 1860, when he began rapidly to gain prominence through a sequence of town churches. The issue of building large churches for the working-class poor in the unfashionable new districts of London was a major concern at this time among the Ecclesiologists, particularly A. J. B. Hope (ii), and even provoked debates in Parliament; a ‘model town church’ was then provided by ...

(b 1811; d 1887).

American furniture-maker based in New York. He was active from 1841, when he entered into a partnership, and was based in Brooklyn from the 1850s. The best-known examples of his furniture are a Gothic Revival armchair (c. 1847; New York, Met.) and an elaborately decorated cabinet (built to accommodate a set of Audubon’s ...

(b Belfast, Nov 5, 1811; d Montreal, Nov 19, 1885).

Canadian architect of Irish origin. The son of an architect of the same name, he arrived in Quebec City in 1830. He established a practice there in 1831 and designed houses, including a Gothic Revival villa for the provincial secretary Dominick Daly (1798–1868), who may have been responsible for Browne’s appointment as Chief Architect for the Board of Works. He designed many public buildings in Kingston and Montreal; the former became capital of the Province of Canada in 1841, and Browne was commissioned to modify, add to and erect various government buildings. His masterpiece in Kingston is the City Hall (1843–4; then known as the Town Hall and Market Building), the commission he won in a competition held in 1841. The City Hall shows his characteristic massing of volumes and contrasting textures, using a varied vocabulary and a strong sculptural sense. Facing the waterfront, the main entrance to the T-shaped City Hall has a pediment supported by four columns, surmounted by a tall dome capped by a cupola. He was also responsible for many commercial and domestic commissions in Kingston, notably the houses known as St Andrew’s Manse for St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church and Rockwood for ...

[Heinrich; Henryk]

(b ?1360–65; d after 1428).

German architect. Brunsberg’s work represents an important decorative phase of brick Gothic architecture in western Pomerania. There is documentary evidence for his work at St Katharinen, Brandenburg, and a further three buildings are attributed to him on stylistic grounds. His name appears on a brick inscription on the north side of St Katharinen between the Lady chapel portals: Anno d[o]m[ini] MCCCCI co[n]structa e[st] h[aec] ecc[lesi]a in die assu[m]ptionis Mariae virginis per magistru[m] Hinricu[m] Brunsbergh d[e] Stet[t]in (Master Hinrich Brunsberg of Szczecin (Ger. Stettin) built St Katharinen in 1401). Brunsberg is also mentioned 28 times in the town records of Szczecin between 1400 and 1428; in each case he is referred to as master in the context of either owing or being owed money. All his architectural activity was concentrated in the area between Brandenburg and Szczecin.

Brunsberg rebuilt the nave of St Katharinen, a five-bay hall construction, after the old nave collapsed in ...

(b London, Dec 2, 1827; d London, April 20, 1881).

English architect and designer. His flamboyant and original High Victorian architectural style was influenced by French 13th-century Gothic, but he drew also on sources of many other periods. He is best known for his work at Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch for his patron, the Marquess of Bute. His designs for the decorative arts, particularly furniture and metalwork, are equally inventive and elaborate. He was friendly with the leaders of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, employing a number of Pre-Raphaelite artists and craftsmen in his decorative work.

He was the eldest son of Alfred Burges, a marine engineer and partner of James Walker (1781–1862). Walker & Burges were government engineers for many military and civil projects. Alfred Burges was immensely successful and the family wealth later enabled William to be selective in his commissions.

William Burges attended King’s College School, London, from 1839; here he was a contemporary of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and studied under ...

[incorrectly Stehaimer]

(b Burghausen, c. 1355–60; d Landshut, Aug 10, 1432).

German architect. He was the most important architect of the German-speaking area in the late 14th century and the early 15th, and the founder of the tradition of Late Gothic hall churches in south Germany that lasted over a century and a half. Documentary sources are scarce: the earliest possible reference is in 1389, when ‘Master Hans’ is mentioned as master builder of the church of St Martin at Landshut, in a context indicating that he had already held this office for several years. On the assumption that he was then a mature man, he was probably trained in the builders’ lodge of the large town church of St Jakob, Burghausen, which was built from 1360. Some features of his main work, St Martin at Landshut, suggest that he must have been familiar with the stylistic repertory of the cathedral lodge in Prague under Peter Parler (see Parler, Peter (von Gmünd)...