Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/263

Rh Norman or Anglo-Norman art; but whatever they borrowed they recreated and improved. This rib profile of Lincoln is, comparatively, not a fine one. The sharp re-entering angles where the lower fillet joins the round, the absence of re-entering angles as foils to the curves in the composition of the rounds and hollows, and the meaningless drip members above, render it far inferior as a piece of artistic design to the exquisitely simple and graceful profile of Amiens. It is, however, perhaps, more likely that the vaults in which these ribs occur were reconstructed at a later epoch, and that the profile of the rib was then imitated from French examples. This profile is not, I believe, found elsewhere till considerably later, as in the nave and presbytery of the same church, where this lower filleted round is employed in all the ribs.

The difference of spirit between the works of the French Gothic architects and those of the Anglo-Normans is thus manifest hardly less in the respective treatment of mouldings than in modes of construction. Where the French architect kept his orders few, and his arch mouldings simple, confining his chief enrichment mainly to the sculpture of the capitals, the Anglo-Norman multiplies his orders, and subdivides them into wearisome lines, while he is often content to treat his capitals in the same way, denying them the enrichment of sculpture, and thus offering no relief to the endless linear elaboration. And this multiplicity of arch lines is still further increased by the invariable employment of hood mouldings with profiles, in the interior no less than on the exterior, of the drip-stone type.

In such ways the Anglo-Norman lack both of the sense of functional fitness and artistic beauty is almost constantly displayed. The architects of the island never perceived that the lightness and multiplicity of parts in the Gothic style are natural and unsought results of a peculiar constructive system, and not at all mere decorative peculiarities; but regarding the effect of lightness and multiplicity as an end to be sought, they cut up their really heavy piers and arches into an unnecessary, and, as we have seen, often illogical, profusion of small members.

In Germany it appears that during the twelfth century no material changes in profiles were made. Capitals retain