The marriage of the two arts is, Gothically, not on equal
terms. It never occurred, of course, to the Gothic architect that it
should be. His _ensemble_ was always one of which the chief, the
overwhelming, one may almost say the sole, interest is structural. He
even imposed the condition that the sculpture which decorated his
structure should be itself architecturally structural. One figure of the
portals of Chartres is almost as like another as one pillar of the
interior is like its fellows; for the reason--eminently satisfactory to
the architect--that it discharges an identical function.
Emancipation from this thraldom of the architect is Sluters's great
distinction, however. He is modern in this sense, without going so
far--without going anything like so far--as the modern sculptor who
divorces his work from that of the architect with whom he is called upon
to combine to the end of an _ensemble_ that shall be equally agreeable
to the sense satisfied by form and that satisfied by structure. His
figures, subordinate as they are to the general architectural purpose
and function of what they decorate, are not only not purely structural
in their expression, stiff as they still are from the point of view of
absolutely free sculpture; they are, moreover, not merely unrelated to
each other in any essential sense, such as that in which the figures of
the Pisans and of Goujon are related; they are on the contrary each and
all wonderfully accentuated and individualized.
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