Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/302

Rh another illustration of that kinship to Greek art which this sculpture shows in so many other points. Such order as this appears, indeed, under an almost infinite variety of forms, and it is sometimes but obscurely manifest; but in one way or another it is a constant law alike of organic nature and of good art. In Greek and Gothic art it is invariably conspicuous.

Such are some of the leading characteristics of French foliate sculpture. Its finest types, illustrated by the capitals of Paris and the string-courses of Amiens, hardly appear after

FIG. 182 bis. the second quarter of the thirteenth century. From this time onwards the direct imitation of nature becomes too much the artist's aim, and architectural adaptation is more and more lost sight of. A few illustrations of the change from the one condition to the other may afford a better understanding of the qualities which characterise the finest types.

Fig. 183, a portion of a string-course from Noyon, shows in a marked degree the tendency to over-naturalism which had set in by the middle of the thirteenth century. There is great beauty in this design, and its execution is excellent, but it has lost the architectural appropriateness that characterises the strings of Amiens. A proper sense of