SCULPTURE. 49 
were already at a very low ebb. Hence the crusades were not directly of 
any advantage to art ; but indirectly they were, as we shall soon see. 
Although now and then a Genoese or Venetian vessel may have brought 
from the East works in alabaster, porphyry, or verd-antique, and perhaps 
also occasionally a statue or a reliquary, such insignificant matters can 
hardly have exerted any influence on the revival of the arts. But the 
wealth which the cities of Italy acquired through their favorable position 
for commerce, and which doubtless was increased by means of the crusades, 
may well have fostered in the citizens the love of splendor and consequently 
a taste for art. The bishops, abbots, and monasteries, moreover, had 
enriched themselves during the crusades by the acquisition of lands sold or 
pledged to them, and by real or falsely authenticated gifts from persons 
who had lost their lives in the East; and these vied with the rich trading 
cities in their love of splendor, and in the munificence with which they 
adorned their palaces and churches with marble, works of sculpture, 
paintings, and mosaics. In this manner the crusades were indeed the 
indirect means of elevating the arts; the direct causes, however, which 
produced this effect were the industrious pursuit of trade and the astuteness 
of the clerical order, who knew how to turn the circumstances of the times 
to their own advantage. 
Notwithstanding the degraded condition of the plastic art in the 9th and 
10th centuries, the fondness for beauty and for embellishment which is 
inherent in man extended the practice of art over every part of Europe, 
and we perceive its feeble beginnings in those buildings of the period 
which have survived to our times. For although Charlemagne caused marble 
and columns to be brought from Italy for his structures at Aix-la-Chapelle, 
there are also statues extant which were executed for him in Germany. 
But with the 11th century there commenced a period in which German 
art outstripped that of all other countries; and as in those times German 
architecture attained a high state of perfection in the short space of two 
centuries, and German architects practised their art in Italy, Spain, France, 
and likewise in the north of Europe, so too sculpture arose here from its 
slumber earlier than in Italy. For while in Italy it was not till the year 
1250 that an advance was effected by the exertions of Nicolas of Pisa, a 
better style of art had been already exhibited in Germany in the reliefs of 
choir-screens in the church of Our Lady at Halberstadt finished in the year 
1200, the monumental effigy of the abbess Agnes at Quedlinburg of the 
year 1203, and the bas-reliefs in the church at Gernrode. 
B. From the Revival of Art in the 13th to the 17th Century. 
‘Tf in the 12th and 13th centuries the art of sculpture made a more rapid 
advance in Germany than anywhere else, and if notwithstanding we 
possess no grand and independent works of statuary executed by Germans 
of that period, the cause of the phenomenon is to be sought in the intimate 
connexion in which sculpture then stood with architecture. If we consider 
the facade of a dome of those times, we behold, it is tiue, an abundance of 
plastic figures; they have, however, even when very cerefully finished, no 
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