GOTHIC SCULPTURE.
SulYeas of Cathedral Sat1phtres.—During the Gothic period France took the lead in sculpture as well as in architecture; the innumerable fig ures that people her cathedrals are more wonderful works of art than are even the famed 'sculptures of the Pisan school in Italy. Connected with this superiority in art was a superiority in thought. To the scholastic philosophy of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was due that encyclo predic spirit which enabled the sculptors of the Gothic period to express in their art a complicated system of subjects representing the history of the world—symbolical, moral, and historical—in a series of correlated cycles of epics in marble. This grand idea was partly carried out in most of the French cathedrals built during the thirteenth century at Amiens, Rheims, Chartres, etc. The Gothic sculptors were inventive geniuses who clothed their ideas in beautiful artistic forms, studied the nude, the antique, and nature in general. It was an age of entlinsiasm, and one in which the spirit of art penetrated to the very core of society and blended harmoniously with religion and with social and intellectual life.
seems wellnigh impossible that the thousands of statues and bas-reliefs of which we know, and many of which we still see, could have been executed within half a century. ..1Ithough the same sub ject had to be treated many times, the different artists showed a remarkable Laity of invention and no tendency to imitate; so that hardly any two examples are alike. In comparing these Gothic sculptures with those of the Rom.mesque period at its best we find that the sculptor of the twelfth century tried (but seldom with success) to block out statues faithfully the individuals among whom he lived and moved, while the Gothic artist caught in marble the leading characteristics of a class of individuals of a society, of a race; and this typical form of art went hand in hand with a great development of portraiture and genre sculpture. Gothic sculpture, like Greek, was quiet and disliked dramatic or theatrical effects, though it often produced scenes with intense feeling. During its best period it was essentially genuine and natural.
SlaInes of Charlres Plate 20 (figs. are reproduced some of the statues that stand in the north porch of the Cathedral of Chartres. They were probably executed between 1230 and 1240, and show the well developed, not the earliest, stage of Gothic sculpture, which is well repre sented by some of the sculptures of Notre Dame, in Paris, executed about 1 2 To. Compared with the figures of Rheims and Amiens, these statues at
Chartres seem slender and delicate; they have not the strength of the former, but have more grace. Compared, on the other hand, with the late Romanesque statues(j/. 19, f. 2), with their stiff architectural forms, they show a great change; for they are no longer considered merely as minor parts of the edifice, but are recognized as possessing individual value. The figures on the left (6/. 20,fig. t) represent, the one, King David with crown and sceptre, the other, an Old-Testament prophet. David has curly hair an 1 beard and a countenance both mild and noble, while the prophet, his drapery cast picturesquely over his head, has a more commanding aspect. Next (fif;-. 2) comes the statue of the bishop of Chartres to whom we owe the building. lie wears his full episcopal robes, the mitre, and embroidered gloves; his broad, grave face, with its pronounced, clear-cut features and deep-set eyes, is evidently a portrait, and apparently a good one. Finally (fig. 3), the two graceful female figures are the wise vir gins. In these even more than in the other figures we admire the delicate treatment of the drapery and the bold sweep of its folds; we can almost feel the texture itself, so well is the fine stuff reproduced in stone. Else where, as at Rheims, we admire the drapery for its broad masses and rich folds. In fact, the study of drapery in its manifold effects has hardly ever been carried to a greater degree of perfection than at this time in France. Although Gothic drapery often has a strongly classical character especially like the pure Greek type, it would be wrong to attribute this excellence to an imitation of the antique; in fact, a great part of the originality of the French sculptor consisted in his prolific invention of artistically-conceived drapery. It seems probable that the artist in making his preliminary sketches first drew the nude figure in the desired position and afterward draped it, thus attaining the admirable pose which is invariably to be seen in the sculptures of the thirteenth century. Although the spirit of the age did not favor the display of the human form, which would have been most unsuitable in the treatment of religious art, it is certain that the Gothic sculptor considered the study of the nude to be a part of his scientific training.