Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/317

Rh adjunct. No ranges of statues adorn and animate the upper stories of the German façades; nor, in general, do they flank the great portals. The figure sculpture which in some instances occurs in these portals was mostly copied from French models, and it naturally partakes of the character that sculpture in France had assumed in the later Gothic epoch when the German copies were executed. The famous statues of the Cathedral of Strassburg, for instance, have a sentimental expression, caught from the later sculptures of France, joined with a realism that is more peculiarly German.

To the general absence of figure sculpture in connection with architecture even the Cathedral of Cologne affords no marked exception. The statues ranged in the jambs of its portals and against the faces of its buttresses give the ground-story, indeed, much the appearance of a French Cathedral; but above the ground-story level the structure is unadorned with sculpture save that of crockets and finials. Of the figure sculpture of the ground-story little need be said, as it is entirely of post-Gothic workmanship, and partakes rather of the character of the art of the Renaissance than of that of the Middle Ages.

For the distinctively German types of foliate sculpture we may take those capitals of the choir of Cologne which date from about the middle of the thirteenth century. Of these capitals, Fig. 159, p. 241, presents a fair example. It will be seen that the leafage has little architectural character, but that the over-naturalism, which belongs to the late foliate sculpture of France, reappears here with increased distinctness. All expression of sympathy with the functional office of the capital is wanting. This capital itself, as before remarked, is little more than a continuation of the shaft, and around it the elaborately wrought leafage is, with no inventive grace, entwined. If the late capitals of England are extravagant in artificial foliation, these of Germany are trivial in their naturalism, and remarkable for lack of monumental expression.

In Italy there was no figure sculpture of importance before that of Niccola Pisano—that is to say, not until considerably after the epoch of the most splendid development of Gothic sculpture in France. And when it became