The absence of sculpture of real beauty was not due to any lack of opportunity. There were thousands of stone workers. As had been the case with the Greek temples, the great Gothic cathedrals provided abundant opportunities for sculptural decoration. In France the façades of the great churches were often literally covered with carved reliefs, and rows upon rows of statues. The purely architectural work served merely as a background to one huge composition of statuary. The deeply recessed portals and the galleries and columns of the interior were equally designed to receive a profusion of sculptural decoration. The triple portal of the west front at Chartres contained some 720 figures, large and small, the tympanum in the centre depicting Our Lord in Glory. Attached to the pillars of the doorways were numerous large carvings representing the ancestors of Christ. The transept porches were decorated with a similar profusion of statuary. But whereas the sculpture of the Parthenon not only served perfectly as an architectural decoration, but was also “a thing of beauty” in itself, it was otherwise with the plastic decoration of a Gothic cathedral. The Gothic architect had not the slightest scruple in sacrificing the beauty of any statue for the architectural effect as a whole. At times the Gothic sculptor’s deviations from nature were almost uncanny. In his choice of a subject, and in his method of representation, he was only concerned with the realistic presentation of the beliefs of the Roman Church. His task was to translate the mysteries of life and death into a language which the humblest worshipper could not misunderstand. The well-known alto-relievo in Bourges Cathedral affords a fine illustration of this phase of Gothic art. The scene represents the torturing of the souls of the damned. We are spared nothing. Everything is set down in all its naked horror. The Gothic sculptor had his virtues. One was that he always told his story clearly. He sought to suggest the ideals revealed by the Man Christ as he understood them. His only aim was to give form to the new emotions and thoughts which he believed arose from the teachings of the Church. Can we help admiring the grand sincerity with which he kept his aim ever in the foreground, and the wonderful fertility of his invention in presenting the ideas he had to portray? [Illustration: GOTHIC PANEL THE LAST JUDGMENT A bas-relief from the porch of Bourges Cathedral] [Illustration: GIOVANNI PISANO THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI A panel from the pulpit of the Duomo at Pisa, now in the Museo Civico, Pisa]