Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/268

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238 Sculpture in the Gothic Period. The names of Hans Bruggemann and Veit Stoss must be mentioned as master carvers of Germany. To the former is attributed a carved altar in the cathedral of Schleswig, and many similar works of the kind. In mediasval times it was customary both to paint and gild the wood carvings in ecclesiastical buildings. In the Netherlands considerable advance was made in the arts of sculpture and painting in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The school of Dinant was succeeded by that of Tournay. The various sculptures in the porch of Tournay Cathedral are good specimens of Gothic sculp- ture in Belgium ; and many funeral monuments in differ- ent towns bear witness to the skill and art-feeling of Belgian sculptors and workers in bronze of this period. At the beginning of the thirteenth century a revival of all the arts commenced in Italy, and a school of sculpture arose, the artists of which pursued methods very different from those of their contemporaries in other countries, and worked out a purely individual national style. The leader of this movement was Niccolb of Pisa, or Niccolb Pisano, who early excelled all his contemporaries. Like most of the artists of his time, Niccolb combined the professions of the architect, the sculptor, and the painter. But he was the first to give to sculpture the prominent position to which it was entitled ; and, aided by his son Giovanni, he enriched the cathedrals of Pisa, Orvieto, Pistoja, Siena, and Bologna with statuary, in which grace and true art feeling were combined with truth to nature and simplicity of arrangement. These two artists, zealous converts of the ascetic Franciscan and Dominican form of the Roman Catholic religion, may be said to have translated into stone