For that matter, the interiors of many of the famous cathedrals are of such elegant and often delicate traceries. This is why the Gothic novel, for example, summed up the very dichotomous view of the "Gothic" architectural style (including the Gothic Revival movement, in many cases): On the one hand, you had the massive stone structure with its "barbaric", "grim" appearance, yet incorporated within that were the most airy, light, colorful aspects such as the apsidal windows, the quadrupartite ceilings with their traceries and sculptured trellis-work, and so on and so forth.
But Gothic came to be associated with barbarism and darkness because it was (both architecturally and philosophically) opposed to the Classical style of Roman architecture and thought. Instead of the clean lines and rigidly mathemacal contours, Gothic tended toward the fanciful, as befit the philosophical views of the time. One of the elements so often pointed out by historians of the movement was the way the Gothic structure directs the viewer's eye up -- heavenward, and away from earthier things. Flying buttresses allowed the very massive, heavy materials to be contradicted by the delicacy and detail of their use... etc. Nonetheless, until the revival period, most commentators saw all Gothic as barbaric and lacking in taste because it was not pristine, simple (in appearance, at least), or understated, but flamboyant, "emotionally overcharged", excessive, and the like....
