Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/266

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236 Sculpture in the Gothic Period. later than in France. The Liebfrauen Kirche at Treves (1237 — 1243) is one of the earliest Gothic buildings in Germany, and its sculptures are good specimens of the transitional style. The Cathedral of Bamberg, of some- what later date, is enriched with a series of fine sculptures in the later Gothic style. In the south-west provinces, owing probably to their near neighbourhood to France, the true home of the Gothic style, there are many extensive works of great beauty ; of these we must name the sculp- tures of Strasburg Cathedral (Fig. 99), the fine tomb of Count Ulrich and his wife (about 1265), in the abbey church at Stuttgart, and the sculptures of Freiburg Cathedral. The cathedrals of Bamberg and Nuremberg must also be mentioned : the former, in addition to much architectural sculpture, contains several fine monuments, remarkable for the almost ideal beauty of the heads of some of the figures. The polychrome statues of Christ, Mary, and the Apostles, in the choir of Cologne Cathedral, must take high rank amongst the isolated works of the perfected Gothic style. In the middle of the fourteenth century flourished the sculptor Sebald Schonhofer of Nuremberg, to whom is ascribed the so-called Beautiful Fountain of Nuremberg, the sculptures of the Frauen Kirche, and other works. The sculptures of the southern portal of the Cathedral of Mayence belong to the fourteenth century, when the decadence had already commenced. Of the bronze works of Germany belonging to the Gothic period we must name the equestrian statue of St. George in the Hradschin Square at Prague, and the tomb of Archbishop Conrad of Hochstaden, in the cathedral of Cologne.