The Sculptured Saint Upon a
Gothic Cathedral Fills His Place in the Long,
Narrow Niche, Annihilating Himself for the Great
Church, as a Devotee Should.
Would you know how the Gothic affects a sculptor?
Says August Rodin: “Life is made up of strength and grace; the Gothic gives us this; its influence has entered into my blood and grown into my being.”
Nowadays, when all “the world travels,” schools of art do not grow up in little communities; intellectual boundaries are in no way geographic, and the moral effect of one man on another is hidden from view. But on the walls of the old mediæval churches a simpler people, as their work improved, show their direct obligations to one another.
The Gothic cathedrals which served as [Bibles for the laity] (who, as a rule, could not read print) are now the most veracious chronicles of the period that we possess. Their statements cannot be gainsaid, however variously they may be understood. If some of the last judgments sculptured on their walls, with half of the figures marching toward heaven and the other half (very similar in appearance) moving serenely toward hell, are rather too didactic for this age of doubt, between the lines of these great stone volumes a gentle reader finds countless beautiful stories, much more convincingly told, of artists and artisans working away with smiles on their faces, carving Bible stories under the direction of the clergy; devising figures to personify the virtues and vices; inserting little angels here and there to fill out the design, while the best artist is rewarded with the sweet honor of carving the Madonna.
The barbarian’s gold pays interest yet; the spirit of the bequest is not changed;—a united tribute of the material to the spiritual coming from many men of many minds. The old golden Madonna is patroness still of the five thousand statues of the Cathedral of Rheims, whose mute lips speak so various a language. They tell of a day that is dead and of a day that is eternal; they speak of substance and of spirit; of error and of intuition; of things human and of things divine. Indeed,
“Of every work of art the silent part is best, Of all expression, that which cannot be expressed.”