Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/297

Rh which the work was done—a feeling of delight in natural beauty as exhibited in the least forms of vegetation no less than in the forms of men and animals; and this feeling appears now in its fulness for the first time in the history of the arts. The ancient regard for lower nature, as far as the witness of art attests, was far more limited and was subordinated to interest in the human form. Special attention to the beauties of vegetation, or any definite expression of delight in them, will, as a general rule, be sought for in vain in the arts of antiquity. Antique foliate ornamentation is usually cold and formal in its studied curves and surfaces; but in this Gothic foliage a warm sympathy with every varying beauty of living form is constantly apparent.

It is interesting to notice that the plant forms first employed for ornamental motives were those of springtime—the opening buds and newly-formed leaves of familiar plants, fern, arum, hepatica, plantain, and many others. It was both natural and appropriate that this spring herbage, more than anything else, should stimulate the fancy of men in whose hands the Gothic style was growing; for in the leafage of spring there is an expression of living energy that accords, as nothing else could, with the vital spirit of the new art of building.

To his subtle feeling for nature and wise acceptance of the limitations of art, the French carver joined the highest excellence of execution. The skilfulness of his hand was not the least of his qualities; and it was employed by him as fully in foliate as in figure sculpture. The skill and delicacy of hand exhibited in the work of a great artist have a noble fascination, arising from the feeling and intelligence which direct every touch. The finest sculpture, like the finest painting, is always delicately wrought. The ornaments of the capitals and archivolts of the portals of Paris, for instance, are cut with a delicacy equal to that of the frieze of the Parthenon, or the shrine of Orcagna.

The fine characteristics of the art are exhibited in the capital, Fig. 114, in which the carver's sympathy with nature, his power of abstraction and adaptation, and his skill in execution, are fully manifest. The Corinthianesque motive is still clearly apparent, though the entire form has