Mediæval sculpture followed the fortunes of architecture, both in its rise and fall. In its first beginnings it was characterised by a purity of style not unworthy of Rome in her most glorious days, but rapidly losing touch with the antique ideal, it lost measure and proportion in its development. The wise laws of simplicity, essential to all greatness in art, were set aside in favour of an unruly exuberance which ran riot in details, and was the immediate cause of a decline perceptible even in the fourteenth century, and absolute in the fifteenth. "Sculpture was at its zenith. We are astounded by the activity and fertility of thirteenth-century artists, who peopled façades and embrasures with figures from seven to ten feet in height, and animated every tympanum with countless statuettes. The façade of Notre Dame, by no means one of the richest, has sixty-eight colossal statues, for the most part of the highest excellence; at Chartres and at Amiens there are over a hundred to each porch. The famous figure of Christ at Amiens is a masterpiece; bas-reliefs work out the details of the main subject, and enrich the story with innumerable pictures of amazing vigour and originality." [Illustration: 103. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. CENTRAL PORCH OF WEST FRONT] [Illustration: 104. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. STATUES IN THE SOUTH PORCH] [Illustration: 105. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. CHOIR STALLS. CARVED ORNAMENT] The favourite themes of the thirteenth century had something in common with those of the Romanesque epoch, though there is a sensible difference of treatment and considerable progress in composition, which exhibited more of taste and learning and less of eccentricity. But the satiric power and delight in caricature of our forefathers still demanded an outlet. These found expression in many a caustic gibe at clergy, princes, and rich burghers, and took substance in many a quaint gargoyle. A luxuriant system of ornamentation, adapted from the vegetable kingdom, was auxiliary to statuary. The main subject was enframed by it, or relieved against it; while often the composition itself was enriched by its introduction to complete the decorative effect. Or such a system of decoration was the only sculpturesque motive employed; it was then used with the utmost elaboration, and developed at the expense of statuary. Such was the case in Burgundy and Normandy, in which provinces the latter art was of slow growth. The Byzantine character of the scrolls, carved bands, and fantastic foliage of Romanesque art disappeared; ornament took on a new independence, and began to seek its types among native plant forms. The carved leafage (Fig. 106) of the cloister arcades in the Abbey of Mont St. Michel strikingly illustrate this departure. The very plants which inspired the thirteenth-century sculptors still flourish at the foot of the ancient abbey walls. [Illustration: 106. ABBEY OF MONT ST. MICHEL. CLOISTERS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. CARVED ORNAMENT OF INTERIOR SPANDRILS]