Less than one hundred years separate these archaic beginnings from the superb culmination of Gothic sculpture in the portals of Reims and Amiens. The rapid construction of the great ca thedrals was paralleled by the development of a sculpture that was amazingly profuse and vigorous. The Greek miracle was re peated; the French sculptor in two generations reconquered all that Rome and Byzantium had lost. The innumerable figures of saints and prophets that fill the doorways of the cathedrals are studied from nature and not from Byzantine iconography. En dowed with humanity and with life, these figures are nevertheless treated with a breadth and simplicity altogether consonant with the nobility of their architectural enframement. The draperies, modelled in such a way as to reveal the form and action of the body, are at once gracious and solemn ; the gestures and attitudes, while wholly unconstrained and expressive, are yet free from any violence or agitation that might disturb the repose of the geo metric design; and the faces, although living and individual, have almost invariably that grave passivity that is most suitable to an architectural environment. The solemn company of saints or prophets stand, as they might stand in Heaven, on either side of the figure of Christ, or of His Mother, who is surrounded by a choir of angelic figures, ranged in the orders of the vault. In the tympanum a rich embroidery of reliefs explains in pictorial im agery some story—the Redemption, the Resurrection—full of symbolic meaning. The whole is a transcendent vision, half his tory, half prophecy, revealing the completeness and order and grandeur of that universe which the mediaeval theologian, him self an artist, had envisaged.
The notable qualities of these great ensembles are the perfect union of sculpture and architecture—of nature and mathematics —and the dependence of each part upon the character of the whole. The beauty of nature enters here only to be subdued to the spiritual harmonies which control the design.
The figures of the martyrs in the south transept portal of Char tres (c. 122o) are excellent examples of early 13th century fig ure sculptures. The bodies, enveloped in compact masses of drap ery which prevent the slightest articulation of leg or torso, are cut from cylinders of stone. The feet are planted firmly on cor bels sculptured with a symbol of martyrdom ; the arms cling closely to the bodies; the erect heads bend only in the slightest degree to the right or left. The draperies are thinly incised and hang in studied parallel folds. What gives these figures beauty and spiritual power is the idealization of their faces and the part which they take in the vast ensemble about them. One feels in the transept portals of Chartres the unmistakable presence of a spiritual authority.
The figures of St. Theodore and St. George (c. 1240), also in
the south portal of Chartres, illustrate the rapid technical ad vance that took place in the second quarter of the 13th century. These figures have little of the rigidity of the martyr figures standing beside them. The weight of the body, which bends a little to one side, is thrown upon one foot, and the forms of the legs and shoulders are indicated beneath the draperies which fall in more natural and much deeper folds. The elegance and dignity of these figures is paralleled in those of the right portal of the west facade of Amiens : La Porte Mere-Dieu, the first great door way that is wholly Gothic in character. The natural ease of the postures and the grace of the draperies, especially in the figures of the women, endow these figures with charm without robbing them of their hieratic dignity. The central and left doorways at Notre-Dame, Paris, and the portals of Laon Cathedral, although much restored, are also fine examples of Gothic sculpture of the first half of the XIII. century; but undoubtedly the greatest achievement of this period is the central doorway of Amiens. This majestic portal, which has for its central figure the radiant Beau Dieu flanked by the ranged forms of the Disciples, most perfectly achieves the Gothic ideal: a celestial vision that brings within the compass of a single architectural design one of the noblest ensem bles of form ever conceived by man.
The great portals of Reims contain many examples of early 13th century sculptures—the Abraham, for example, and the St. John the Baptist on the right doorway of the western façade; but the greater number of the figures, as well as the sumptuous char acter of the whole, are more characteristic of the last half of the century. After 126o, the architecture of the doorways holds the statues which people them less firmly in its embrace. The curves of the bodies increase; their contours and planes become less regu lar and less definite ; the draperies, shot with deep shadows, assume a picturesqueness that tends to destroy their plastic unity. The faces are less generalized. A sweet humanity softens the religious austerity of saints and angels. Sometimes, as in the central door way of the west façade, they turn towards each other to enact some simple drama, and sometimes—as in the St. Elizabeth—we discover a modelling that seems obviously imitated from some Hellenic example. Greece is never far distant from these 13th century figures. The Greek spirit, or a spirit akin to the Greek, pervades them even when there is no suggestion of Greek tech nique. Standing at the threshold of the 14th century, when real ism is beginning her successful conquest of architecture, the fig ures of Reims have that tense and somewhat nervous beauty that seems to foretell the profound change that is taking place in Christian thought.