VI. THE NATURE OF GOTHIC 265

even richer in fancy than that of the Italian, only he had been taught a less noble style. This is especially to be remembered with respect to the subordination of figure sculpture above noticed as characteristic of the later Gothic.¹

It is not that such sculpture is wanting; on the contrary, it is often worked into richer groups, and carried out with a perfection of execution, far greater than those which adorn the earlier buildings: but, in the early work, it is vigorous, prominent, and essential to the beauty of the whole; in the late work it is enfeebled, and shrouded in the veil of tracery, from which it may often be removed with little harm to the general effect.*

§ 105. Now the reader may rest assured that no principle of art is more absolute than this,-that a composition from which anything can be removed without doing mischief, is always so far forth inferior. On this ground, therefore, if on no other, there can be no question, for a moment, which of the two schools is the greater; although there are many most noble works in the French traceried Gothic, having a sublimity of their own, dependent on their extreme richness and grace of line, and for which we may be most grateful to their builders. And, indeed, the superiority of the Surface Gothic cannot be completely felt, until we compare it with the more degraded Linear schools, as, for instance, with our own English perpendicular.² The ornaments of the Veronese niche, which we have used for our example, are by no means among the best of their school, yet they will serve our purpose for such a comparison. That of its pinnacle is composed of a single upright flowering plant, of which the stem shoots up through

* In many of the best French Gothic Churches, the groups of figures have been all broken away at the Revolution, without much harm to the picturesqueness, though with grievous loss to the historical value of the architecture: whereas, if from the niche at Verona we were to remove its floral ornaments, and the statue beneath it, nothing would remain but a rude square trefoiled shell, utterly valueless, or even ugly.

¹ [See above, § 100, p. 261.]

² [For Ruskin’s dislike of this style, see Vol. IX. p. 227 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]