SCULPTURE
In the Middle Ages all the arts were auxiliary to architecture. The
architect traced the details of his conception in the workshop, and
superintended the construction; he directed stone-carvers, masons,
sculptors, illuminators, painters, and glass-stainers, and laid his
_imprimatur_ on every branch of the work of which he was the creator.
Thus the connection between the allied arts was very close. The
history of sculpture is that of architecture, for the diverse
influences which marked their origin and modifications were common to
both. Each reached its apogee in the brilliant manifestations of the
thirteenth century, and each followed the same path to decadence less
than two centuries later.
Statuary and ornamental sculpture were inseparable, being executed by
the same artists in pursuance of the same idea: the study of nature.
In obedience to the law of increasing development they abandoned the
hieratic forms imposed by religious tradition, but only to give a new
expression to these very traditions, which were still preserved and
venerated.
Roman inspiration, and even direct imitation of Roman sculpture,
is clearly traceable in the first half of the thirteenth century.
Rheims, which may be accepted as the masterpiece, the last word, so to
speak, of Gothic architecture, illustrates this influence in certain
magnificent examples of the western porch.
[Illustration: 94. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. STATUES OF WEST FRONT. CENTRAL
PORCH]
[Illustration: 95. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. STATUES OF WEST FRONT]
[Illustration: 96. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. STATUES OF WEST FRONT]
The architects of the thirteenth century were pre-eminently the
children of their generation. Ignoring their Latin descent they
followed in the paths of the innovators so far as monumental structure
was concerned; but they in their turn inaugurated a new departure
by abandoning the Byzantine convention in statuary and sculptured
ornament which had prevailed throughout the preceding century, in
favour of the more ancient Roman tradition. In this one respect they
made a salutary return upon those antique principles which they
afterwards definitively abandoned.
[Illustration: 97. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. INTERIOR OF PRINCIPAL DOOR.
STATUE AND ORNAMENT]
[Illustration: 98. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. INTERIOR OF PRINCIPAL DOOR.
STATUE AND ORNAMENT]
The influence of Roman art upon French mediæval sculpture is
unquestionable. Its course may be traced through the relations
existing between North and South long before the Crusades, principally
by means of the great religious communities, and even more manifestly
in the countless monuments raised in Gaul on Roman models, or in those
constructed by Gallo-Romans for several centuries. Many of these
survived the incursions of the barbarians.
The origin of ornamental sculpture is no less venerable.
Superficially, it would seem to have drawn its inspiration mainly from
the Romanesque epoch; but according to modern _savants_[35] its source
must be looked for in much remoter periods. Oriental art, imported
into Scandinavia, and there barbarised, was introduced into Ireland
in the early centuries of our era. The Irish monks, whose power was
very great, and who seem to have been the principal agents in the
Renascence of the days of Charlemagne, created, or at any rate greatly
influenced Carlovingian art by their manuscripts and miniatures. From
Carlovingian art that of the so-called Romanesque period was born, and
this was in its turn the parent of the ornamental sculpture of the
thirteenth century. In the admirably decorative character of this
art we recognise the influence of an ancient tradition handed on from
generation to generation, to be finally rejuvenated, invigorated, and
transformed as to detail by a close study of nature, precisely as had
happened in the allied development of statuary.
[35] M. A. de Montaiglon, Professor at the _École des Chartes_.
The architects of the Ile-de-France, like those of Rheims,
assimilated the principles of the new art with the supple skill which
characterised them, such assimilation bearing rich fruit at Notre Dame
de Paris in the sculptured figures of the west porch, and no less in
their accessory ornaments.
[Illustration: 99. NOTRE DAME DE PARIS. PRINCIPAL DOOR. RUNNING LEAF
PATTERN]
[Illustration: 100. NOTRE DAME DE PARIS. RUNNING LEAF PATTERN ON
ARCHIVOLTS OF NORTH DOOR]
A most instructive comparative study is furnished by the north and
south porches of Chartres Cathedral. Here we find, in one building,
examples of sculptures inspired by the hieratic tradition of
Byzantium, and of those which had been transformed and naturalised by
a return to antique ideals.
[Illustration: 101. CHARTRES CATHEDRAL. STATUES OF THE NORTH PORCH]
At Amiens again certain of the sculptures were influenced by the new
principles. But in the greater part there is a prodigality of motive
and looseness of execution which indicate decline no less surely than
the mistaken ingenuity of the structural details.
[Illustration: 102. CHARTRES CATHEDRAL. STATUES OF THE SOUTH PORCH]
Mediæval sculpture followed the fortunes of architecture, both in
its rise and fall. In its first beginnings it was characterised by
a purity of style not unworthy of Rome in her most glorious days,
but rapidly losing touch with the antique ideal, it lost measure and
proportion in its development. The wise laws of simplicity, essential
to all greatness in art, were set aside in favour of an unruly
exuberance which ran riot in details, and was the immediate cause of
a decline perceptible even in the fourteenth century, and absolute
in the fifteenth. "Sculpture was at its zenith. We are astounded by
the activity and fertility of thirteenth-century artists, who peopled
façades and embrasures with figures from seven to ten feet in height,
and animated every tympanum with countless statuettes. The façade of
Notre Dame, by no means one of the richest, has sixty-eight colossal
statues, for the most part of the highest excellence; at Chartres and
at Amiens there are over a hundred to each porch. The famous figure of
Christ at Amiens is a masterpiece; bas-reliefs work out the details of
the main subject, and enrich the story with innumerable pictures of
amazing vigour and originality."
[Illustration: 103. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. CENTRAL PORCH OF WEST FRONT]
[Illustration: 104. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. STATUES IN THE SOUTH PORCH]
[Illustration: 105. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. CHOIR STALLS. CARVED ORNAMENT]
The favourite themes of the thirteenth century had something in
common with those of the Romanesque epoch, though there is a sensible
difference of treatment and considerable progress in composition,
which exhibited more of taste and learning and less of eccentricity.
But the satiric power and delight in caricature of our forefathers
still demanded an outlet. These found expression in many a caustic
gibe at clergy, princes, and rich burghers, and took substance in many
a quaint gargoyle. A luxuriant system of ornamentation, adapted from
the vegetable kingdom, was auxiliary to statuary. The main subject was
enframed by it, or relieved against it; while often the composition
itself was enriched by its introduction to complete the decorative
effect. Or such a system of decoration was the only sculpturesque
motive employed; it was then used with the utmost elaboration, and
developed at the expense of statuary. Such was the case in Burgundy
and Normandy, in which provinces the latter art was of slow growth.
The Byzantine character of the scrolls, carved bands, and fantastic
foliage of Romanesque art disappeared; ornament took on a new
independence, and began to seek its types among native plant forms.
The carved leafage (Fig. 106) of the cloister arcades in the Abbey of
Mont St. Michel strikingly illustrate this departure. The very plants
which inspired the thirteenth-century sculptors still flourish at the
foot of the ancient abbey walls.
[Illustration: 106. ABBEY OF MONT ST. MICHEL. CLOISTERS OF THE
THIRTEENTH CENTURY. CARVED ORNAMENT OF INTERIOR SPANDRILS]
[Illustration: 107. WOODEN STATUETTE (HEIGHT 23⅝ IN.) THIRTEENTH
CENTURY. ATELIERS DE LA CHAISE DIEU, AUVERGNE]
[Illustration: 108. IVORY STATUETTE (HEIGHT 9⅞ IN.) THIRTEENTH
CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS]
Thus the flora of our own fields was applied in lithic form to the
elements of our church architecture. But the breadth proper to
architectural sculpture was still preserved by means of ingenious
combinations.
It was not until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that the
imitation of natural forms became servile, tedious, and over-minute,
and that the beauty of the whole was sacrificed to exaggerated
faithfulness of detail.[36]
[36] Anthyme St. Paul, _Histoire Monumentale de la France_; Paris,
Hachette and Co., 1884.
[Illustration: 108A. IVORY STATUETTE (HEIGHT 9½ IN.) FIFTEENTH
CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS]
It should be noted that the decadence which manifested itself in
monumental sculpture was far less rapid in the more intimate art which
may be distinguished as _imagery_. In the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries all sculptors were _image-makers_; but towards the close of
the latter, and during the fifteenth, the term was specially applied
to carvers of images in wood, ivory, etc. Art still flourished in
their ateliers in all its beauty, notably that of the goldsmiths,
who carved images in high or low relief in precious metals, and who,
thanks to the severely paternal regulations of the _maîtrise_, were
enabled to bring French decorative art to the highest degree of
perfection. The beautiful carved wooden stalls of Amiens, Auch, and
Albi, to name but the most famous, testify to the vigorous talent of
the fourteenth and fifteenth-century image-carvers.
[Illustration: 109. WOODEN STATUETTE (HEIGHT 10 IN.) FOURTEENTH
CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS]
[Illustration: 110. IVORY DIPTYCH (HEIGHT 6⅜ IN.) FOURTEENTH
CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS]
[Illustration: 110A. IVORY DIPTYCH (HEIGHT 2¾ IN.) FOURTEENTH
CENTURY. SCHOOL OF THE ILE-DE-FRANCE]
[Illustration: 111. IVORY DIPTYCH (HEIGHT 4¾ IN.) FOURTEENTH
CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS]
Flemish _ateliers_, which were kept up by the severe rules of the
guilds, exercised a salutary influence upon the Burgundian craftsmen.
This is more especially true of the great workshops of Antwerp
and of Brussels, and perhaps also of those of Southern Germany.
Burgundian influences reacted in their turn upon the artists of the
Ile-de-France, notably in Paris (that brilliant centre of all artistic
activities in the fourteenth century), and stirred them to emulation.
The union of these various elements brought about the revival of the
fine tradition of the thirteenth century, and towards the close of
the fifteenth century paved the way for a French Renascence, which
heralded that more famous movement of the sixteenth, the credit of
which is usually given to the Italians, who, however, such was the
infatuation of the times, contributed rather to the debasement than to
the regeneration of French national art.
[Illustration: 111A. IVORY PLAQUE (HEIGHT 6-11/16 IN.) COVER OF AN
EVANGELIUM. FOURTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF THE ILE-DE-FRANCE (SOISSONS)]
[Illustration: 112. HEAD IN SILVER GILT REPOUSSÉ. HALF-LIFE SIZE.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY. ATELIERS OF THE GOLDSMITH'S GUILD OF PARIS]
[Illustration: 113. GROUP CARVED IN WOOD (HEIGHT 10-1/4 IN.) FIFTEENTH
CENTURY. SCHOOL OF ANTWERP]
The remarkable sculptures that owe their origin to the _ateliers_ of
Antwerp are distinguished by one of the quarterings of the civic arms,
a severed hand burnt in with a red-hot iron. Those of Brussels are
branded in like fashion. The images of wood, ivory, and _vermeil_,
that we figure as illustrating the art of the image-carvers from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth century, show that the old tradition was
still cherished in this community. Their artists were so far swayed
by iconographic convention that a certain hieratic sentiment is
perceptible in their works; but this is never allowed to outweigh
fitness of action and expression, and their masterpieces are so
instinct with taste and delicacy, composed with so much skill and
executed with such freedom, that they are the admiration of modern
artists.[37]
[37] The statuettes, diptychs, etc., in wood, ivory, and _vermeil_, or
silver-gilt, figured from No. 107 to No. 115, belong to the author.
[Illustration: 114. WOODEN STATUETTE, PAINTED AND GILDED (HEIGHT
19-11/16 IN.) FIFTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF BRUSSELS]
[Illustration: 115. WOODEN STATUETTE, PAINTED AND GILDED (HEIGHT
19-11/16 IN.) SIXTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF MUNICH]
These essentially French qualities they owe, primarily, of course,
to the genius of their creators, but in a scarcely inferior degree
to the fostering care of the _maîtrises_, institutions which only
require a certain modification by the progressive leaven of today, to
become models for the imitation of all whose function it is to develop
national art.