NARRATOR: The space you are in right now features stained glass windows and sculpture from the soaring cathedrals of the Gothic Age. Many other fine Gothic stained glass windows can be found at the Cloisters—a branch of the Metropolitan located in Northern Manhattan and dedicated exclusively to Medieval Art. Curator Timothy Husband.

TIMOTHY HUSBAND: Gothic architecture basically tried to dematerialize the vessel of the building itself. The walls become higher and higher, the walls become thinner and thinner. They become so thin, the internal column support so tall and so slender, that the outward thrust can only be held up by external buttressing. And hence you have in high Gothic cathedrals the extraordinary ‘flying buttresses.’ As the Gothic architect became more and more accomplished at his art and engineering the windows became likewise taller and the walls almost dematerialized.

The Gothic cathedral was viewed as God’s house on earth, and the more vertical its appearance, reaching for the heavens above, the more appropriate it seemed as a house of worship, for the greater glory of God. The stained glass had metaphorical meaning as well. For example, the fact that light can pass through glass without physically harming it was equated with the Immaculate Conception and the birth of Christ from a Virgin mother.