igos.j IN THE GERMANIC MUSEUM OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 637 



teenth century marks a truly classic epoch in the development of 

 German plastic act. German sculpture between 1220 and 1250 is 

 fully on a level with the great creations of the lyric and epic poetry 

 of chivalry ; and no one who is susceptible to the peculiar beauty 

 of Walther von der Vogelweide's minne-song or is impressed with 

 the heroic figures of the Nibelungenlied, of Kudrun, of Parzival, or 

 Tristan, can fail to observe their affinity of spirit with the plastic 

 monuments of Wechselburg and Freiberg, of Naumburg and Hal- 

 berstadt, of Bamberg and Strassburg. Here as well as there we 

 find a high degree of refinement and measure ; a strenuous insistence 

 on courteous decorum ; intense moral earnestness linked to a strange 

 fancifulness of imagination ; a curious combination of scrupulous 

 attention to certain conventional forms of dress, gesture, and ex- 

 pression, on the one hand, and a free sweep in the delineation of 

 character, on the other. Here as well as there we find a happy 

 union of the universally human with the distinctively mediaeval ; a 

 wonderful blending of the ideal human type with the characteristic 

 features of the portrait. As the art of Phidias and Praxiteles is an 

 indispensable supplement to the art of yEschylus and Sophocles, for 

 our understanding of Attic culture in its prime, so these works 

 of German sculpture of the thirteenth century stand to us (or 

 should stand to us) by the side of the great productions of the 

 chivalric poets, as incontrovertible proofs of the free and noble 

 conception of humanity reached by medieval culture at its height. 



A brief review of a few at least of these sculptures may :.erve 

 to elucidate this statement somewhat more fully. 



Among the earliest plastic monuments of the thirteenth century 

 are the pulpit and the Crucifixion group of the Church of Wechsel- 

 burg in Saxony, executed probably between 12 10 and 1220. In both 

 monuments it seems as though the artist was still grappling with the 

 problem of form. In the relief from the front of the pulpit — 

 Christ seated on the throne as Judge of the world, surrounded by the 

 symbols of the Evangelists — mastery of form, classic solemnity, 

 exalted repose have indeed been attained. In the more animated 

 scenes of the side reliefs — the sacrifice of Isaac and the healing of 

 the Jews by the brazen serpent — there is a curious contrast between 

 grandeur and awkwardness, sweetness of feeling and naive natural- 



