Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/280

Rh two in number, the lintel being divided into two parts by a central shaft. The subjects are respectively, the Death and the Resurrection of the Virgin. The composition on the spectator's left, representing the death, is so much mutilated that it cannot be fairly judged of. But the one on the right (Fig. 171), representing the resurrection, though sadly broken in parts, is yet fairly complete as a whole. It is not easy to find terms in which to speak of so beautiful a work. In sentiment and grace it is equalled by few works of any school or period. And the archaisms of treatment which it exhibits, like those in the subsequent masterpieces of Giotto, which the composition in many points resembles, do but enhance its charm.

FIG. 171.

It is an instructive fact, not, perhaps, often enough commented upon, that the works of art in which the expression is most simple and sincere are in every school usually those of early masters, who have but imperfectly attained command of the means of expression. With the full attainment of technical skill there almost invariably comes a baneful degree of sophistication. Compare, for instance, Giotto's fresco of the Death of St. Francis with Raphael's Transfiguration; or Carpaccio's St. Ursula with Titian's Assumption.

In this lintel of Senlis there is at once a spiritual beauty