Peter Kidson
Historian of medieval architecture who stressed the need to understand its intellectual context
PETER KIDSON, who has died aged 93, was Professor of Medieval Architecture at the Courtauld Institute and was once described as “the most influential historian of medieval architecture of his generation in the English-speaking world”.
He eschewed the Pevsneresque focus on antiquarian detail, instead showing how the emergence of new styles was shaped by anonymous builders thinking imaginatively about architectural problems and working out effective solutions.
He emphasised the importance of seeing medieval churches and cathedrals as conceived within the framework of theology and medieval understanding of history and mathematics – as reflected in techniques of planning, building, and associated iconography.
The son of a radio officer in the Merchant Navy, Peter Kidson was born on August 23 1925 about a mile away from York Minster, a proximity which spurred a fascination with Gothic architecture from early childhood. When he was seven the family moved to Kent and he was educated at Dartford Grammar School.
In 1943 he won an exhibition to read Geography at Selwyn College, Cambridge, but was conscripted for war service in the Royal Navy before going up. Returning to the university in 1946, he switched to History, gaining a First in Part I, then to Moral Sciences.
After graduating in 1950 he arrived at the Courtauld to take a degree in Art History, and would remain there until his retirement in 1990.
The most important influence on him was his tutor, Christopher Hohler, who kindled his interest in Gothic proportion by setting him an essay on the “Milan controversy”.
This centred on records of debates between experts brought in, after work had begun on the city’s cathedral in the late 14th century, to advise on the problems thrown up when the original Lombard Gothic design proved inadequate to deal with so large a structure. The records constitute the most complete documentary evidence available of medieval proportion theory.
Kidson graduated in 1952 with a First, despite finishing only half the paper, and went on to do a PHD under Geoffrey Webb on “Systems of Measurement and Proportion in Early Medieval Architecture”.
In 1955 he joined the staff of the Institute’s Conway Library under the Polish-born art historian George Zarnecki, who gave him much encouragement.
In 1958 Kidson published his first book, Sculpture at Chartres, a lively account of the intricate iconography of the great French cathedral, which he placed within its historical and theological context. The following year he was appointed Conway Librarian, and in 1961 was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
In 1962 he published what some consider his most important contribution to scholarly understanding of English medieval architecture – his chapters in the History of English Architecture, where he first set out his theory that innovation in English Romanesque and Gothic architecture was largely a response to geometric problems encountered along the way.
During the 1960s Kidson taught at several universities, including Cambridge and the University of East Anglia. In 1967 he was appointed a lecturer (and in 1971 reader) at the Courtauld.
His The Medieval World, published in 1967, was a tour de force of historical synthesis in which he placed emphasis, in his discussion of the Gothic splendours of the High and Late Middle Ages, on the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux, a more militant Papacy, and the desire by French kings to exalt the role of a reinvigorated monarchy. One reviewer described the book as “popular scholarship in its most effective form”.
Kidson wrote numerous essays and articles and contributed to Sir Bannister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture (1987), and The New Cambridge Medieval History (2004). All his writing was characterised by elegance of expression, clarity of thought, a gift for synthesis and a deep understanding of historical forces, allied to an engaging irreverence for art historical theory.
Though he was a self-effacing man who refused to be listed in Who’s Who, Kidson received a number of honours and appointments, including serving as a commissioner of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (1977), chairman of the Commission’s Architectural Committee (1985-87), president of the British Archaeological Association (1982), and Rhind Lecturer for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1986).
In 1980 he gave the Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and in 1988 was awarded a personal Chair by London University.
Known affectionately as “PK”, Kidson helped to inspire generations of scholars with his love of speculation, argument and originality. In 1990, on the eve of his retirement, a festschrift, Medieval Architecture and its Intellectual Context, was published in his honour, with contributions from colleagues and former students.
In 1983 he married the architectural historian Sarah Pearson, who survives him with a son from an earlier marriage to Pamela Bell.
Peter Kidson, born August 23 1925, died February 10 2019