GERMANY. The thirteenth century was the golden age of German mediaeval sculpture, which was doubtless influenced by contemporary French art. As the Germans still built in the Romanesque style, their churches did not afford opportunity for great cycles of plastic art as did those of France. Their activity was confined to the interior of the church between the arches, the walls of the choir, the altar, and the pulpit; ex terior decoration was rare and only practiced at the end of the epoch. The figures were full of life and dignity, less realistic than the French, and representing a calmer, higher ideal. As in the Romanesque epoch, the Saxon and Franconian schools lead. The early work of the Saxon School is best represented in the apostles and angels in the choir of the Church of Saint Michael, Hildes heims, and its highest development in the Church of Halberstadt. Heavier and more impassioned are the figures of the South Saxon School, as exemplified in the reliefs of the pulpit and the "Crucifixion" at Wechselberg; the famous "Gold en Portal" at Freiburg, the sculptures of which represent, in a grandiose manner, the "Revelation of the Kingdom of God to Man by Christ ;" and that most beautiful of German sepulchral monuments, the tomb of Henry the Lion and his wife Matilda in the Cathedral of Brunswick. The school reached its culmination in the latter part of the thirteenth century in the statues of the benefactors of the Church in the Cathedral of Nuremberg—simple, realistic, and dignified, and superb in treatment of drapery. Of equal excel
lence are the contemporary statues by the Fran conian School in the Cathedral of Bamberg, of which the "Ancient Sibyl" is the best known. The Rhenish School followed the French more closely, as is evident in the Church of the Virgin at Troves and in the minsters of Freiburg and Strassburg. More characteristically German are the sculp tures of the Nuremberg churches, chiefly reliefs with small figures. In the fifteenth century sculptures in wood took the place of stone, with a change of style, though not of ideals. corre sponding to the new material. The figures were treated with sharper lines, and the draperies in wrinkles instead of folds; both figures and dra peries were colored. From this period date the finest Gothic altars and other ecclesiastical fur niture of wood. The two chief schools were the Franconian, with Nuremberg as a centre, and the. Swabian at Ulm. The chief artist of the latter was Joerg Svrlin the elder, whose chief work is the choir-stalls in the minster of Ulm (1469-741. The Germanic Museum and the churches of Nuremberg contain fine examples of the wood carving of that school. The chief artists were Michael Wolgemuth (q.v.) and Veit Stoss (q.v.), who transplanted the art to Cracow, Poland. His latest and best work, however, falls in the Re naissance period.