MadrigalBackground is the vault of a church that actually exists. I figured I’d do it like a p

MadrigalBackground is the vault of a church that actually exists. I figured I’d do it like a practice in 3d thinking, which turned out to be a painful but enlightening process. The twirl under the dragon’s head is called a “Schleifenstern”, which translates to “ribbon star”. It’s a decorated keystone that hangs from the ceiling; it has these masonry pieces freely winding around it. The style is late medieval Eastern German (read “An Architectural Masterpiece”), and the masonry of that period is considered the most statically complex in the world. You’d think more heavily decorated styles like Flamboyant or Perpendicular would take the cake in all regards, but behind all that beautiful detail are weight distribution systems that are quite a bit simpler. I hate to reinforce the German stereotype like that; less decoration, more complexity, and fewer images all in favour of mathematical austeritiy, but it more than applies in this case. Guess why the Albrechtsburg received such attention in the 19th century … We used the phrase “sought-after complexity,” which I find describes the music of that time as well. I mean, yeah, art does kinda always search for its own problems to solve, but this is next level. Hence the name of the image, even if Madrigals are from Italy, a centre of innovation rather than culminating tradition at the time the church was built. Nonetheless, I find that the title still fits. I was inside the church when the choir was rehearsing one time and the polyphonic aesthetic stuck to the architecture effortlessly.  -- source link

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