The representation of physical beauty being with the Gothic carver subordinated to the purpose of enforcing the idea that the soul is superior to the body, and of illustrating the doctrine of the salvation of the soul by goodness of life, and the loss of the soul by evil life, it was necessary that beings and objects not beautiful should enter into his sculptured ornamental schemes. The evils that beset the lives and tempt the souls of men had to be in some way set forth, no less than the human virtues and the heavenly ideals. The unhappy lot of the wicked had to be figured as well as the felicities of the good. Hence figures which embody the mediæval notions of the monstrous and the grotesque are conspicuous elements in Gothic sculpture, especially after the beginning of the thirteenth century. The grotesque, in the finest Gothic art, while often apparently introduced in a playful spirit, had thus primarily a serious purpose.
GROTESQUE NOTRE DAME, PARIS
GROTESQUE NOTRE DAME, PARIS
The Romanesque imagery, consisting of fantastic creations of animal life which embodied distorted traditions of the Roman mythology, combined with forms originating in the rude imagination of the Northern races, was largely rejected by the early Gothic artists. The imaginary creatures which they sometimes introduced were, for the most part, confined to the symbolic animals of the Bible—such as those seen by St. John in the Apocalypse. But by degrees other imaginary creations were introduced, until finally, during the thirteenth century, the grotesque animal life of the Gothic edifice became even more extended in range than that of the richest Romanesque monuments had been, and an imaginary fauna was created, which, while it derived much from the older conceptions, embodied so much that was new as to constitute a distinctly Gothic class. This development grew primarily out of the old popular belief in the symbolic character of animals and imaginary creatures. As symbols of human qualities, both good and evil, these animals, real and imaginary, were now wrought, for encouragement and for warning, upon the stones of the sacred edifice. A further purpose of this fauna, as of the sculpture of the human figure and the flora with which it was associated, apparently was that the Gothic monument might present a compendious illustration of the known world of creation, imagination and faith.
