Gothic style

Gothic style [готичний стиль; gotychnyi styl]. Dominant artistic style of Western and Central Europe in the Middle Ages. In architecture it is characterized by pointed arches and ribbed vaults supported by vertical shafts and buttresses. The pointed arch was known along the Black Sea coast in the early Christian period and was reintroduced to Ukraine in the 14th–15th centuries from Western and Southern Europe. Gothic architecture was relatively rare in the 14th–16th centuries, and was restricted mainly to Western Ukraine, where it served as a transitory style. It was used mainly in castles and fortifications such as those in Khotyn, Lutsk, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Medzhybizh, and Nevytske, and in Makovytsia in Transcarpathia. Elements of the Gothic style are also found in churches in Rohatyn, Sutkivtsi, Ostroh, and Derman, and more frequently in Roman Catholic churches such as the Lviv Latin Cathedral and the church in Vyzhniany near Zolochiv (Lviv oblast). The Gothic style can be discerned in the domes of wooden churches in the Khust region of Transcarpathia—eg, Saint Parasceve's Church (1643) in Krainykovo and Saint Nicholas's Church (1779) in Danylove. The naturalistic trend in Gothic art had an influence on Ukrainian monumental and iconographic painting (see Icon), on engraving and handicrafts, and especially on metalworking and jewelry making (see Jewelry and ornamentation) in the 15th–17th centuries.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]