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VII.
GOTHIC SCULPTURE IN FRANCE
267
The carved ornaments of the Romanesque builders had been, for the most part, derived from ancient conventional designs as exhibited in Roman and Byzantine art. In France these motives had been wrought over and modified,
FIG. 174.
sometimes clumsily, and again with much ingenuity and even lively fancy, but with little real invention. Fresh motives, however, appear at an early date—the inspiration of nature transforming the conventional elements, and soon imparting to them a living expression of a kind peculiar to Gothic art.
The Cluniac sculptors of Burgundy appear to have been
