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The Ark of God: The Evolution of Foliate Capitals in the Paris Basin Before 1170--The Archaic Capitals Prior to 1130 (The Creation of Gothic Architecture, Vol. III B: An Illustrated Thesaurus)

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Extracted from the Burlington Magazine (April 2004) review by Prof Paul Crossley.
"THE ARK OF GOD is a comprehensive pictorial history of Early Gothic churches in the limestone region of northern France known as the Paris Basin.
THE ARK is presented as a five-part series that covers the crucial 150 years between 1100 and 1250 when Romanesque architecture was transformed into Gothic.
The Paris Basin contains 1,420 churches with work from these years. Most have never been published. The photographs will illustrate over half of these which significantly contributed to the creation of the new architecture.
The underlying purpose of the series is four-fold:
1) Provide a photographic description of all the more significant churches during this 150 years.
2) Analyze the stylistic changes to the foliate capitals and the evolution of vault erection techniques.
3) Establish a solid and all-inclusive foundation for dating the construction phases of these churches.
4) Use this chronology to identify the time and place for each of the creative ideas, inventions and innovations that produced the Gothic style, to follow their evolution from place to place and to identify the major creators."