History of art . hen always timidly—by the confused andswarming life of the bas-reliefs and the statues throughwhich the French artisans brought to the frameworkof society, like fruits on an altar, the tribute of theirlove. For five hundred years the aristocratic arts ofpriests and soldiers had been carried on in the shelterof the ramparts of the military strongholds and thewalls of the monasteries of these mystic islands, and ^ And why did she send over to France for Guillaume de Sens if thisbuilder, and perhaps the architect of Saint-Denis, were not the first inEurope to use the broken arch
History of art . hen always timidly—by the confused andswarming life of the bas-reliefs and the statues throughwhich the French artisans brought to the frameworkof society, like fruits on an altar, the tribute of theirlove. For five hundred years the aristocratic arts ofpriests and soldiers had been carried on in the shelterof the ramparts of the military strongholds and thewalls of the monasteries of these mystic islands, and ^ And why did she send over to France for Guillaume de Sens if thisbuilder, and perhaps the architect of Saint-Denis, were not the first inEurope to use the broken arch as the determining principle of the wholearchitecture of the ogive? THE EXPANSION OF THE FRENCH IDEA 351 from such arts nothing of the people, or of life itself,could come forth. Ireland, with its dripping humidityburied under its green leaves, could not pass on toEngland, when transmitting Christianity to thatcountry, anything more than the miniatures patientlycomposed in its monasteries while the eternal rain. England (xiii Century). Exeter Cathedral, the nave. drenched the windowpanes. The weapons of theSaxons, the carved prows of the Scandinavian barks,and the importations from Byzantium were only somany separate elements for which the flame of a homo-geneous people, that could weld them into a unifiedforce, was lacking. When the Normans arrived theyappropriated the Roman tradition imported fromFrance in the course of previous centuries, and builtmany powerful churches in which a square and crenel-ated tower rose from the center of the nave, as if toimpress upon the mind the idea of military they were camping on British soil. They were to 352 MEDIAEVAL ART furnish to the Enghsh people only the unshakable foun-dation of temples and strongholds. Cathedrals, ab-beys, castles, ramparts, illuminated manuscripts, funer-ary statues of alabaster—all was an art of the classes,from the beginning until the hour when Shakespearefrees and spreads over the world the to
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectart, bookyear1921
