Before entering on the subject of Gothic carvings, one class of bone caskets should be mentioned which are roughly carved in imitation of the Romanesque monumental style, with rows of tall figures under round arcades. Molinier thinks they are rather archaistic than archaic, being made in Constantinople as late as the thirteenth century, from old models, and sold to contain the relics brought back from the East by the Crusaders.
There are examples in the Berlin Museum, the Louvre, and the Musée Cluny; the latter contained the relics of St. Barnaby, and was the gift of Hugh, Abbot d’Estival and Bishop of Ptolemaïs in the thirteenth century.
The stages of development from the Romanesque to Gothic are almost imperceptible, and it is hard to say when the lingering classical traditions received their final transformation. The same breath which awakened the life in architecture freed the sculptor from the chains of custom, and we may consider the statues on the porch at Chartres as the commencement of modern sculpture. Like the Greeks, the Gothic artists formed a type by the process of selection from individuals. The new art was at first absolutely religious and simple, but the research for grace and the ever growing naturalism, mitigated, it is true, by extreme elegance and delicacy, gradually engrossed the entire mind of the artist and ended in the exclusion of all spirituality.
The ivory carvers long continued repeating the old formulæ, and it was only by the end of the thirteenth century that they commenced to copy the exquisite statues which decorated the new cathedrals in such numbers.
There are several examples of thirteenth century work still extremely old-fashioned in style, as the three little pierced plaques in the Louvre, representing the twelve apostles, accompanied by the favourite French saints, Denis, Rusticus and Eleutherius. The style is still transitional, but the forms of the foliage are freer, and a considerable modification of type is visible. The Virgin in the Collection Fillon is seated full face with the Child sitting equally on both knees, the stiffness of the pose being only relieved by a little freedom in the turn of the Child’s head.
The marvellous impulse of religious enthusiasm, which, arising in the thirteenth century, became evident by the passionate fervour of the worship of the Virgin, and the multiplication of her images for public and private devotion. One of the most ideally noble representations is that in the group of _The Coronation of the Virgin_ in the Louvre, (Fig. 28); it closely resembles the best sculpture in its severe lines, and was probably made about 1280. A hundred years later there is an entry in the Inventory of Charles V. which most probably refers to this group; it reads most quaintly in the old French. “_Item, ung courronnement de Nostre Seigneur à Nostre-Dame, d’yvire et trois angellotz de mesmes._”