Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/294

Rh out parallel in the older carvings wrought by workmen who derived none of their inspiration directly from living things.

The Norman example appears to be a rude simplification of the Roman-Corinthianesque type—a simplification in which the subdivisions of the acanthoid leaves are omitted. The Noyon capital has a superior grace and beauty, and shows something of the best qualities of the ancient leaf forms, though its immediate prototype is the Norman rather than any ancient example.

This Corinthianesque type of capital became at once the leading type in Gothic architecture, and almost countless varieties of it were wrought in the Ile-de-France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The outline of the leaf was soon changed from the form A, Fig. 177, which is that of

FIG. 177

the Noyon capital, to the form B, one more in conformity with the ancient acanthoid leaf C. Fine examples of the simpler types of such capitals occur in the triforium of the nave of Senlis (Fig. 178), in St. Julien-le-Pauvre, at Paris, and in other early churches.

In none of the earliest capitals does the influence of nature do more than give a new and more vital beauty to the curves and the modelling of motives that are, in all their parts, derived from ancient forms; but very soon the more direct study of nature leads to further changes. The naturalistic elements extend beyond mere abstract lines, and include something of specific forms. Thus in the triforium of the choir of Paris the crockets of certain capitals (Fig. 113) terminate in unfolding leaflets which, though of a severely conventionalised character, are yet unmistakably drawn freshly from the fields. This sculpture dates from the third quarter of the twelfth century, and the same