Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/482

 432 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE cult to make a selection among so many marvelous struc- Gothic tures, but the reader can get some idea of their towers varied merits by examining detailed views of the twin yet contrasting front towers of Chartres, the one in the severely pure style of the closing twelfth century, the other a richly ornate spire added in the early sixteenth, and which are respectively three hundred and fifty and three hundred and seventy-five feet in height. Or of the central lantern of Lincoln from the thirteenth, and the filmy octag- onal crown from the fourteenth century above the tran- septs of St. Ouen in Rouen ; or of the intricate and delicate open-work spires of Freiburg, Strassburg, and Cologne. Such were the Gothic cathedrals. The style originated in the twelfth century and reached the highest point of excel- lence in the thirteenth. But many churches were nummary. - J not entirely finished until later, or received ad- ditions especially in ornamentation which enhanced their beauty. Some fine cathedrals were not started until the fourteenth century, but those of Chartres, Amiens, Rouen, Paris, and Rheims, which are alike of vast proportions and the very first rank, were all finished in the thirteenth cen- tury, and a decline in Gothic art becomes noticeable in the later Middle Ages. If medieval sculpture was done chiefly in connection with buildings, medieval painting was performed chiefly in con- Medieval nection with books. The pages of manuscripts painting were a d ornec [ w ^ miniatures and illuminations which in their brilliant hues rival the Byzantine mosaics and the Gothic stained glass, and which in their realistic touches, picturesque scenes, and uncouth monsters remind us of the stone carvings. In Italy, where the churches had more bare wall surface, a good deal of fresco painting was done, and finally Giotto, a contemporary of Dante, broke away from the stiff symbolism of the earlier school and began to repre- sent scenes from the Bible and from the lives of the saints in what seemed to his contemporaries a dramatic and life- like manner. But of him we shall speak again later as a fore- runner of the greater painters of the Italian Renaissance.