Chapter I: Introduction

English gothic architecture has been rightly described as a great national living art. Gothic architecture existed as a living art over a great part of western Europe for nearly five hundred years. In each country where it flourished it developed national characteristics. In no feature was this more conspicuous than in foliage sculpture.

When we describe an art as national, we do not mean that its germs sprang into existence within the country, but that, once sown or planted, they took root there and grew up under the influences of national surroundings. By a living art we mean an art that is not mere copying, but one that manifests a natural growth and development of innate force. This does not exclude a power of assimilation of foreign elements. Just as a tree may produce a variation of fruit or flower by being grafted with a foreign shoot, so a national art may absorb and be influenced by foreign ideas. But so long as it possesses a self-contained force springing from its roots it remains a national living art. Such was Gothic architecture in England from 1050 to 1550, if we include Romanesque origins and Tudor survivals.

If we go back further still than 1050 we find certain forms of carved foliage in use, but they are mostly more suggestive of the cast-off leaves of autumn than of spring buds. Most of them appear to be reminiscences or distant copies of forms to be found in decadent Byzantine or Roman sculpture. But, just as in nature the buds that will not come to maturity till the spring are found pushing off the autumn dry leaves, if we search we shall find among these rude and debased forms the embryo of a form destined to become the basis of that beautiful type of carving which is called Stiff-leaf, and which afterwards became the most perfect expression of our exclusively English Gothic foliage sculpture.

The Anglo-Saxon period was not one of steady progress. There were bright spots--times when and places where saintliness and learning shone for brief intervals, and there were schools of art where great excellence was attained in the illumination of manuscripts. There were also schools where considerable artistic skill and refinement were shown in sculptured reliefs. But the general impression produced by a study of Saxon remains is that from time to time masons were introduced from the continent, who executed fairly good work, the influence of which faded away in the course of a generation or two. The constant incursions of the Danes were not favourable to any steady progress in art, and in the deteriorating copies of the work of foreign masons we cannot expect to see many signs of life.

At the same time we must remember that very beautiful art existed in Ireland under similar conditions. It may be that there is hardly anything left of numerous works of art produced in Saxon England. Many must have been destroyed by the Danes, and it is said that the Conqueror sent many away to France and to the Pope[1]. Of these some may be still in existence, but it is difficult to differentiate them from similar work produced elsewhere.

The Normans before and at the time of the Conquest, though they were great builders, and were inspired by a fresh impulse through the adoption of free-arch construction, were very poor sculptors. They had cast aside the dregs of Classical entablatures and placed their arches directly upon their piers or columns, but they seldom attempted any sculptured ornament. When they did so, it was either a distant copy of Classical or, especially when human figures were intended, a rude and barbarous effort. Later on, as they became more skilled, two rival influences become apparent--the French, following Roman or Byzantine models, and the English, which was also reminiscent of Classical traditions but mixed with Norse and manuscript, and sometimes metal-work and wicker-work suggestions. The Classical traditions often seem more associated with Byzantine than Roman sources. It was from the English and not the French elements that our characteristic English Gothic foliage arose. The most constant feature of Anglo-Saxon sculpture was intertwining strands terminating in conventional half-opened leaves (Pls. 2 and 25) or trefoiled buds. From the trefoil was developed the Early English stiff-leaf foliage which soon ousted the French Corinthian, and for a hundred years maintained the style which may be regarded as our national style of Gothic foliage.

Towards the end of the thirteenth century the various permutations and combinations of the stiff-leaf convention had been exhausted, and for some ten or twenty years a pure naturalism prevailed, but it then gave way to a fresh convention, called the Decorated, in which the naturalism was modified by a peculiar kind of waving and rippling which is easily recognised. This style continued in the west until the end of the Gothic period; elsewhere foliage sculpture in stone came almost to an end before the Perpendicular period, the straight lines and panelling of that style not lending themselves to floral decoration. On monuments and other rich work we sometimes find bands of vine-leaf or other foliage, generally coarse and square-cut. At the very end of the Gothic period there was some attempt to return to naturalism, but this was nipped in the bud by the invasion of Renaissance art (Pl. 85).

It is remarkable that, seeing how close was the connexion between England and France in the days of our Plantagenet kings, just when Gothic art on both sides of the Channel was in the full vigour of its youthful exuberance, the development was so different. In no features was this difference more marked than in the treatment of foliage sculpture as well as of mouldings. In northern France there is very little in the way of intermediate convention between the Romanesque Corinthian type of foliage, and a naturalistic representation of leaves and flowers. In fact they were intermingled. There is no parallel at all to our English stiff-leaf, which is one of the chief glories of our national architecture, except, possibly, in a few instances in Normandy under English influence.