Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/322



colour was employed on many parts of the Gothic building, enlivening sculpture, and relieving plain surfaces by various ornamental patterns, the art of figure painting now became much less conspicuous and much less general than it had been, and than it still continued to be in the structures which were erected in those parts of Gaul which lay mainly outside of the region of the Gothic movement.

Yet wall painting was still more or less practised in the Ile-de-France, and some notice of this painting is therefore necessary to complete our study of the Gothic style. Unhappily no examples of wall painting in strictly Gothic buildings have been preserved uninjured, and such scanty and mutilated remains as those, for instance, in the transept of Noyon, and those in the wall arcades of the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, are insufficient to afford a clear understanding of their original character. But illuminated manuscripts of the time are abundant and well preserved, and from them, rather than from the almost obliterated examples of painting that are occasionally met with on the walls of churches, we may derive illustrations of this art. Its character, as exhibited in these manuscripts, shows a very primitive state of pictorial development. Hardly more than the most elementary qualities of outline and colour are displayed; and these are, of course, ornamental rather than representative in motive. The drawing exhibits a curious mingling of archaic rudeness with much skill and freedom of line. In fact, as regards delineation of the figure and easy expression of move-