Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/275

Rh save those of ancient Greece and the later schools of Italy.

Among the first of these works are the sculptures of the west portals and the portal of the north transept of the Church of St. Denis. In the portal of the transept are life-sized, full-length, figures of kings—one against each shaft of the jambs, which disclose merits before unknown in Northern Europe. At first sight these sculptures may not impress the beholder as much superior to those of the schools of the South; but on further study and comparison their superior qualities will be manifest to a discriminating eye. If they be compared, for instance, with the famous statues of the cloister of St. Trophime at Aries (Fig. 168), which are at least half a century later in date, the remarkably early advance of the schools of Paris and its neighbourhood will be strikingly apparent. In Fig. 168 it will be noticed that, notwithstanding the fine classical cast of the draperies, there is much of the rigid character that is peculiar to the formal types of Byzantine design. Traces of Byzantine convention in treatment of drapery are clearly apparent, especially on the breast, where folds are indicated by simple incised lines on a surface but very slightly, and by no means truthfully, modelled. In the heads and hands there is a degree of angularity and a tendency to model in planes which bespeak a comparatively rude art. In Fig. 169, a statue from the portal of the transept of St. Denis, these defects do not appear. In the heads and extremities there is no block-like clumsiness; the surfaces are finely