99. NOTRE DAME DE PARIS. PRINCIPAL DOOR. RUNNING LEAF PATTERN
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.
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.
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."