Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ...produce bad work. To the individualist of the twentieth century this condition of affairs is unthinkable. Yet the fact remains that in the Gothic period the most remote country churches, the most insignificant buildings, show the same exquisite detail, the same unerring sense of beauty as the great cathedrals. Thus the mediaeval builders pursued their strange ideals of poverty, chastity and obedience. Small wonder the materialist modern shrugs his shoulders and passes on. FRENCH GOTHIC AND THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE DURING the Middle Ages the dominant influence in western art was the Gothic of France. This fact is so familiar that the statement borders upon banality. The generalization holds even in some apparent exceptions. If France borrowed the Flamboyant from England, she nevertheless gave the style its distinctive character, and passed it on to other nations in a French guise. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, the superior excellence of the French manner was acknowledged throughout Europe, from Sicily to Scandinavia, from Ireland to Hungary. It has, however, generally been assumed that the influence of Gothic ended with the Middle Ages, and that Renaissance art sought its inspiration in other sources considered more pure or more troubled according to the critic's angle of vision. Scholars have almost entirely overlooked the very deep influence which the French Middle Ages exerted upon the art of the Italian Renaissance. It is, indeed, a curious paradox that a period which seems the antithesis and negation of Gothic should, nevertheless, owe to its despised predecessor essential features of its greatness; so curious, indeed, that the point may be worth investigation in some detail, even...