Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/375

 X] THE ANTIQUE IN MEDIEVAL ART 357 is architectural, germane to the structure of the build- ing, which it makes plain and emphasizes. From the twelfth century, moreover, the cycle of subjects in church painting and sculpture enlarges, and becomes a mirror of universal life, as known and ordered in the Christian science of the Middle Ages. The crea- tion and ordering of this gigantic whole was the supreme achievement of the Middle Ages in artistic composition. In certain subjects the general lines of antique Christian or Byzantine compositions might be retained as sacred ; but the elements which were pre- served were modified, and then engulfed in this new world of Gothic sculpture. The antique types of form' and feature pass away ; their place is taken by types which are not abstract and conventional, but formed from observation of mediaeval humanity. These become real, national, individual, conforming to the characteristics of the peoples creating them.^ There is, however, another supreme fact regarding them. In the north the races among whom they arise have been Christian from the times of their barbarian childhood, and these types have been matured under the Christian dispensation. In Italy the new art of Giotto has also grown out of the barbarism and decadence of the preceding Chris- tian centuries. It, too, is Christian, and according to its different national style will be found expressive of Christian sentiments, emotions, and ideals, even as the sculpture of the north expresses them. These per- 1 Retpecting the •volution of these tme local types In French Gothic, see Louis Oonse, La SciUpture Frarv^aise (1880), pp. 9-lfi; <6., L'art Gothiquet Chap. XU.