Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/298

Rh become modified and the ornament changed. The ornamentation consists of four great compound leaves rising against the bell, one under each angle of the abacus, with four lesser leaves in the intervals. The grooved mid-ribs of the greater leaves terminating in crockets form vigorous springing curves which, rising from the astragal, seem by their inherent energy to support the corners of the abacus. The forms of the leaves are simple, each consisting of a central member with a five-lobed leaflet on each side of it. In outline they are full of the spirit of nature without direct imitation of real leaves, and though symmetrical in form and arrangement, they are not rigidly so. In Gothic art symmetry is never absolute, as in a geometric figure. It always exhibits irregularities which give to every part of the form treated a living expression. In modelling this ornamentation presents surfaces which afford pleasant gradations of light, while the deep depressions and intervals produce effective lines and spaces of vigorous shade; there is no deep cutting anywhere, nor any excessive projections; the form of the bell is strictly preserved and clearly apparent; no unmodelled masses nor unfinished contours anywhere appear—every ridge is smoothly rounded, and every furrow carefully hollowed. This extreme refinement of finish does not always appear in Gothic sculpture, though it is characteristic of the best. In the Cathedral of Paris, in the parts that belong to the early thirteenth century, it appears everywhere.

As we approach the west end of the nave of Paris there is a marked increase of direct likeness to nature in the foliate ornamentation, until the limit of naturalism consistent with architectural fitness is almost overpassed in the Chapel of the Catechists in the South Tower. Here, in the south-east angle, the vaulting shaft has a capital (Fig. 180), in which actual forms are represented with close approach to exactness. It is hard to qualify our admiration for so beautiful a work, but certainly this ornamentation is not, so much as that of the former example, an integral part of the capital. It has somewhat the effect of real leaves laid up against the bell. The undercutting is so deep that a look of detachment is produced which impairs the solid, monumental expression so desirable in a capital. The leaf repre-