Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/45

I ponent details of their monuments, but in the wealth of sculpture and painting with which they adorned them. Both of these arts were employed as auxiliaries; but it was sculpture rather than painting that received the highest development. Not that the Gothic artists had less aptitude for painting. Traces enough of their painting, and a vast wealth of manuscript designs, remain to show their capacity in this direction. But painting could hardly reach any full development in connection with a system of architecture which presented so little wall space whereon to paint, and which so strictly required, in the auxiliary arts, an absolute subjection to architectural expression. The art of producing brilliantly-coloured designs in glass to fill the vast openings of the new architecture was, indeed, a kind of painting, which the Gothic artists made peculiarly their own, and developed magnificently. But a twofold convention, that of architectural fitness on the one hand, and the far-reaching one growing out of the translucent medium on the other, limited this art to the strictest heraldic conditions. The dazzling brilliancy, too, of stained glass designs was overpowering to the effect of painting on an opaque surface. And hence, except in a subordinate kind of decoration, strong in colour, and heightened by gilding—like the borders of the pages of an illuminated manuscript—on small spaces and slender shafts, and even on sculpture, there was little call for the exercise of this branch of the painter's skill.

But sculpture did not require broad surfaces, and its effect within the building was not injured by the brilliancy of coloured glass, while on the exterior it was the most effective kind of enrichment. It was appropriate just where painting was not. Capitals, string-courses, archivolts, etc., all admitted and even called for enrichment by sculpture. The art of sculpture, accordingly, became, in Gothic architecture, an inseparable auxiliary, and almost an integral part of the fabric.