Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/264

Rh the peculiar forms of the German-Romanesque, in which the cushion type, in great variety of outline and proportion, mingles with a type which more or less recalls the Roman-Corinthian, as at St. Godard's Church, Hildesheim, the Abbey Church of Königslutter, and many others, while string mouldings retain the flat upper surface of ancient design. The Cathedral of Magdeburg, which exhibits profiles dating from various epochs from early in the thirteenth century to the close of the fifteenth, may, together with the Cathedral of Cologne, sufficiently illustrate the characteristics of such details in German art. The tenacity with which

FIG. 157. the Germans held on to Romanesque traditional forms is shown at A, Fig. 157, a capital from the choir of Magdeburg, while something of the nature of the early changes which they wrought on French Gothic types is shown at B in the same figure. These are not altogether bad profiles, though they are distinctly inferior in expression and in grace, not only to French, but also to the best Anglo-Norman types, such, for instance, as that shown in Fig. 140. The profile of the abacus of the capital (A, Fig. 157) is that of an inverted Attic base, which, in this pronounced form, is hardly an appropriate one for an abacus, because the projection of the upper moulding is too great to give a good line of support. However little the outline of the abacus may have to do with the real strength of the member, it is important