The Greek Parthenon, Notre-Dame De Reims Cathedral

“In the design of the building itself it is often difficult to draw a line between practical necessity and deliberate intention, since Iktinos seems subtly to have exploited the former in the latter.” This quote about the Greek Parthenon, taken from Pollitt’s work on ancient Greek art and separated from its context, could almost be applied to a description of a much later, almost millennia later, Notre-Dame de Reims Cathedral. While separated both by time and location, each ‘temple’ was created at a height of understanding by architects and masons who surpassed all others in their craft. Both temple and cathedral were constructed to induce a sense of awe and terror in the viewer so that by looking upon them one might be brought into an encounter with the divine. The Greek Temple in Athens, begun around 440 B.C., was the crowning achievement of the age and symbolized the culmination of man’s search to bring to light the order inherent in natural beauty. The Parthenon was created at the end of the Archaic age when the Greeks shifted from the view that the order of the universe was on the level of the divine, beyond man’s understanding or control, and all that he …show more content…
The Gothic Cathedral, similar to the ancient temple in the abundance of light and rigorous application of geometry, aims to achieve something different upon competition. Instead of pointing towards Nature and to Man the Cathedral points to the God of Man and Nature. And so it cannot help but mirror the effects of housing the Creator within that, like Man Divinized, material creation takes on Light and immateriality sharing in the brilliance of