Sketch of French Art
by
Dr. Walther Gensel.
The earliest achievements of art in France, as illustrated in the
historical museum at Saint - Germain -en - Laye , possess but little
interest for the majority of visitors to Paris; even the monuments
of the Gallo-Roman period and of the Merovingian and Carlovingian
epochs are of real importance only to the professed archaeologist.
The ordinary art-lover finds little to attract him in French art before
the close of the 9th century. About the year 1000, however, its
Romanesque churches and sculptures placed France in the front
rank of artistic nations; a century and a half later Gothic art arose
in Northern France, where it speedily attained its earliest and
finest perfection; during the Renaissance period French artists
produced works, notably in the domains of profane architecture
and sculpture, which need not shrink from comparison with Italian
works of the same date; in the 17th and 18th centuries Paris
was the home of an imposingly gorgeous decorative art, which com¬
pelled the admiration and emulation of the rest of Europe; and
since the Revolution the dominant currents of modern art have
flowed from the same centre. The course of the vast development
thus indicated abounds in vicissitudes, and it is the object of the
following sketch to throw some light upon the various stages. For
the study of French architecture Paris by itself is insufficient; but
for painting and sculpture an exceptionally rich field of study is
afforded by the Louvre, the Luxembourg, the Trocadero, and the
Muse"es de Cluny, Carnavalet, and Galliera, supplemented by Ver¬
sailles, St. Denis, and Chantilly in the immediate environs, and
Fontainebleau and Compiegne a little farther off.
Among the many causes that contributed to the development of
Romanesque Architecture may be noted the enormous growth in
the power of the church; the need of providing fitting shrines for
the relics brought home by the numerous pilgrims; the necessity
of rebuilding the churches burned by the Northmen, and the effort
to make the new churches larger and more lasting than their pre¬
decessors ; and, perhaps, also the relief experienced all over Christen¬
dom on the lapse of the year 1000, which had been universally
expected to bring the end of the world. Romanesque architecture
adhered in general to the fundamental forms of the Roman basilica,
though at the same time it developed these and incorporated with
them Byzantine, French, and Saracenic elements. In the North at
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