new regimes of patronage: avignon and italy

By one reading, the hallmark of the development of Gothic art in the later Middle Ages is not internationalism – the major pan-European styles, whether Romanesque, Byzantine or Gothic of the previous centuries all had an international dimension – but rather extraordinary diversity. The major factor behind this diversification was the emergence of new regimes of patronage, for while the courts of western Europe continued their signal role in commissioning major works of art and architecture, the role of patronage in the newly powerful cities was growing inexorably. Though we can point to significant urban centres in the thirteenth century, for example Paris, London and Rome, the plethora of urban patronage in such cities as Cologne, Prague, Siena and Bruges in the next century entailed both more vigorous art production and a wider range of stylistic possibilities. Ecclesiastical patronage also retained much of its vitality throughout the century. At Cologne, the archbishops presided over the completion of their new French-inspired cathedral with stained glass and Franco-Italian panel paintings, creating a distinctive urban idiom of Gothic art quite comparable to the achievements of civic Italy. In England the incomparably wealthy dioceses continued to see significant building activity in the new showy Decorated Style, itself summarised most splendidly by the Benedictines at Ely (plate 1). Throughout western Europe too, the impact of mendicant architecture as developed in the spacious churches of southern France, notably Toulouse, was now sensed further afield, as for example in Germany.