Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/313

Rh a new and living style of ornament, hardly had place in England. The early types in the island are conventionalised in a very different way from that in which French types are conventionalised. Anglo-Norman convention is artificial; it manifests a lack of sensitiveness to the finer characteristics of nature. Traditional elements—those which in the twelfth century were common in textile fabrics and painting, as well as in sculpture—were retained with less modification than they received in France. A carved lintel, now built into the wall of the north transept of Southwell, exhibits a traditional trefoil (Fig. 187), which will be recognised as agreeing in character with the commonest motive in so-called early English foliage. Of these traditional elements the Anglo-Norman designers made varied use, but such invention as they exercised never quite eliminated their artificial character. The so-called stiff-leaved foliage of the early times gives little evidence of a refined artistic sense modifying the conventional prototypes.

It is noticeable that the earliest foliate sculpture in England is the best, and among the finest examples are those of the capitals of Bishop Hugh's choir and transept at Lincoln. Of these none are better than that shown in Fig. 140, p. 225. Yet, notwithstanding its real beauty, the trefoil ornament of this capital exhibits some of the peculiarities that are constant in the early foliate sculpture of England, and which I have characterised as artificial. It will be noticed, for instance, that the mid-rib is a flat-sided, sharp-edged member, and that the edges of the leaflets are also sharp and hard; these peculiarities will be more clearly apparent in Fig. 188, where C is the form of the section through A B. This fillet-like treatment of leaf-ribs, stalks, and leaf-edges is unpleasing to the eye of a beholder who is familiar with the delicate rounding of such details in the sculpture of the Continent; yet, in contrast with the circular abacus and moulding profiles, it sometimes has good effect, though in itself it is an ugly mode of treatment whose hardness will be keenly felt on comparison with such work as that shown in Fig. 182, p. 277. To conventionalise naturally—to derive beauties of form from natural things, and while holding on to all that are compatible with the nature of stone and the exigencies of architectural