Openings are, on the whole, treated very much as the French treated them. A good example is the western doorway at Thann (Fig. [47]); but the use of double tracery in the windows in late examples is characteristic. Sometimes a partial screen of outside tracery is employed in other features besides windows, as may be seen by the very elegant doorway of St. Sebald’s Church at Nuremberg, which we have illustrated (Fig. [49]).
Ornaments.
The ornaments of German Gothic are often profuse, but rarely quite happy. Sculpture, often of a high class, carving of every sort, tracery, and panelling, are largely employed; but with a hardness and a tendency to cover all surfaces with a profusion of weak imitations of tracery that disfigures much of the masonry. The tracery became towards the latter part of the time intricate and unmeaning, and the interpenetrating mouldings already described, though of course intended to be ornamental, are more perplexing and confusing than pleasing: the carving exaggerates the natural markings of the foliage represented, and being thin, and very boldly undercut, resembles leaves beaten out in metal, rather than foliage happily and easily imitated in stone, which is what good architectural carving should be.
The use of coloured building materials and of inlays and mosaics does not prevail to any great extent in Germany, though stained glass is often to be found and coloured wall decoration occasionally.
Fig. 49.—St. Sebald’s Church at Nuremberg. The Bride’s Doorway. (1303-1377.)