Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/308



the architecture of the twelfth century in England figure sculpture is rarely met with, and where it does occur it is of an extremely rude and inexpressive sort, though it exhibits some architectural merits derived from the traditional principles that were common at this time to the whole of Europe. The French custom of enriching the portals of churches with figure sculpture was not generally followed in England. The difference, in this respect, which is shown by the contemporaneous western portals of the Church of St. Denis and Lincoln Cathedral holds all through the Gothic period.

Among very early examples of figure sculpture in England is the band of bas-reliefs which extends across that portion of the west front of the Cathedral of Lincoln which was erected under Remigius about 1090. This sculpture (a group from which is shown in the rude sketch, Fig. 185), though coarse in execution and wanting in expression, has, nevertheless, a good deal of that merit which secures architectural effectiveness. The same architectural character appears in the later and richer sculpture which occupies the tympanum of the so-called Prior's Gateway at Ely, but as compared with contemporaneous work in France the sculpture of Ely is singularly coarse and ungraceful.

Hardly anything of greater importance occurs until towards the middle of the thirteenth century, when suddenly, in the west front of the Cathedral of Wells, we get one of the richest assemblages of sculptures ever gathered into an