If you’ve ever set foot in one of Europe’s Gothic or Romanesque cathedrals and looked up, you likely found yourself spellbound by the striking vaulted ceilings. If you haven’t, photographer David Stephenson allows you to do so vicariously with his Heavenly Vaults project — a series of magnificent kaleidoscopic photos that capture the singular blend of ethereal magic and patterned precision in these architectural triumphs at the intersection of art and mathematics, flattening the vaulted ceilings and distilling them to their essential shapes, recurring fractal-like patterns, and intricate detailing.

Many of these structures, particularly the Gothic cathedrals, were constructed in an era actively occupied with ordering the heavens and expressed in their mathematical nature was a microcosm model of the universe — perhaps a paradoxical proposition that rationality and logic could explain or convey the might of God to which these temples of worship aimed to attest.

Heavenly Vaults is a follow-up to Stephenson’s 2005 book, Visions of Heaven: The Dome in European Architecture. More of Stephenson’s stunning images can be seen on his site.

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