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494
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
Bible. But gradually naturalism triumphs. The draperies cease
to cling in rounded folds, as though damp and moulded to the
body beneath; instead they fall loosely round figures which, a
little stiffly at first, have relaxed from their strained and twisted
postures and are firmly seated, with some sense of perspective,
in their chairs (PL 96 a). Narrative interest widens: a Psalter
made for Gloucester, now in the Staatsbibliothek ofMunich,
has some eighty full pages of Old and New Testament scenes.
It is a return to a classical, humanist style, worked out simul^
taneously in England and northern France; it is in fact a
Channel style, and it represents the interrelationships of the
Angevin Empire rather than any national trend (PL 96 &).
In sculpture this classicizing movement was to lead in France
to the great triumphs ofthe west portals ofAmiens and Rheims
and the south porch of Chartres. England, fertile and imagi^
native in manuscript painting, had no equal sculptural achieve^
ment, at least as far as can be judged from the existing remains,
much battered by Puritan fanaticism and crumbled by English
weather.When in 1 146 Alexander the Magnificent, bishop of
Lincoln, began the remodelling of his cathedral fagade, he
borrowed many motifs from recent work at St. Denis, and his
carved columns show a curiously direct relationship with the
French example. But there is no trace of the column figures
which were the great innovation at St. Denis and were to have
in France so distinguished a future. These do not appear in
England till some years later, at Rochester, and they never bex
came a common English feature. The museum of the York'
shire Philosophical Society has a group of noble figures,
prophets and apostles, almost life size, either from a doorway
or the inside ofthe choir: they must date from the last quarter of
the twelfth century, and have a real sense ofform and a classical
certainty in the fall ofthe drapery; but, impressive though they
are, they are provincial work compared to their French contenv
poraries. The same is true of the two reliefs of seated apostles at
Malmesbury, precursors ofYork by probably some twentyfive
years, robust and vigorous, memorable in the rhythm of their
grouping, but somewhat coarsely cut (PL 97 a). English artists