Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/287

Rh A line is thus obtained of twofold value in its sympathy with the upright lines of the architecture, and as a contrast enhancing the beauty of the  curves. This, or some kindred artifice, is indeed as old as the history of sculpture, having been employed, in one form or another, in innumerable draped statues of antiquity. But it is here employed with a spontaneous sense at once of beauty, and of truth to nature, without any approach to affectation, and hence with admirable effect.

If we now pause to consider what had by this time been accomplished, and reflect that in Italy Giotto was yet unborn, that the sculptures of St. Denis and the west front of Chartres antedate, by nearly a century, the art of Niccola Pisano, and that a considerable time was yet to elapse before Italy should produce a figure equal in beauty and perfection to this Virgin of the transept of Paris, we can hardly fail to be impressed with a new sense of the remarkable character of the Gothic schools of France, which at this early date had reached so high a state of development.

This Gothic sculpture is further remarkable as being the first art which the world had seen in which expression as a motive predominates over form. It can, perhaps, hardly be said that the sculpture of Greek antiquity was always wanting in expression; but it is generally true that such expression as it had was subordinated to the quality of corporeal beauty. By expression