Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/478

 428 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE on the reverse. Less glass has survived from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, than from the thirteenth and sixteenth. After the latter century interest in stained glass ceased and the art practically died out. Also religious fanatics smashed many of the wonderful old windows as well as the statues of the cathedrals. The most ornamented portion of the medieval Gothic cathedral was usually the facade or west front. Here was The facade the mam entrance in the form of recessed por- of a Gothic tals, generally three in number, like the Trinity. cathedral and whose sides and arches were completely covered with statuary. These recessed portals also served the purpose of concealing and adorning the lower parts of the great buttresses which supported the front of the church — a good instance of the close relationship that was almost invariably observed between structure and decoration. On either side of the portals rose towers completely masking the roofs of the aisles. Over the portals and between the towers was a large round or rose window perhaps forty feet in diameter lighting that end of the nave. Above or beneath it were rows of statues or decorative arcades and colonnades. The buttresses before mentioned were ornamented in one way or another in their upper portions, sometimes by niches and panoplies cut in them, and in and under which stood large single statues. This sculptured screen which we have suggested was usually carried up between the towers so that it entirely hid the ridgepole of the nave behind it. If we leave the front of the cathedral and walk along either side, we see the line of solid and flying buttresse Circuit of clothing and supporting the main body of the the cathedral chur ch. In the earliest Gothic churches these props were left bare and heavy, but soon they were made graceful in form, were adorned with carvings, mouldings, and statues, and sometimes were even perforated with arched and circular openings. It is necessary to check the outward thrust of the flying arch at the point where the flying buttress rests on the solid support below, and this is done by superimposing at this point a beautiful stone pin-