and the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain; and, in architectural history, it is contemporaneous with so much of the building of the present St. Peter’s in Rome as fixed the architectural style of that great church. [Plate XXXVII] is a view of the church of Brou, looking westward to the great front whose large windows fill the nave with dazzling daylight and make that west wall itself invisible. The Gothic structure here is complete—as logical and exact as in the palmy days of the thirteenth century; but the decorative treatment is different indeed! On the right is the tomb of the Duchess Margaret of Austria, who completed the church and set up her own and her husband’s tomb with those of earlier princes of the line. This tomb is a structure wholly in keeping with the church, as it was really the cause of its being. There is nothing more interesting in such work than the completely realized naturalistic character of the statuary. Nowhere has the art of the sculptor been left so free as in these flamboyant Gothic buildings—so free to develop itself while still it remains in strict accordance with the requirements of the architectural design. The splendid church of S. Wulfran at Abbeville, in the far north of France, helps us to see still more plainly, this extraordinary development of architectural sculpture because the scale is larger and the artistic power manifested immeasurably more fit to cope with great undertakings. [Plate XXXVIII] giving part of the west portals of that surprising church will show how completely the sculptor’s art has changed since the portals of Reims and of Chartres were undertaken. As for the architectural treatment it is still like that of the church of Brou, Gothic with modifications. The hold which the Gothic system of vaulting, and of building to support the vaults, had over the French builders is visible in this return to earlier principles as soon as the dissensions of the country allowed.
The famous Town Halls of the Netherlands have preserved for us the most perfect, because the most unmingled, traces
