German sculpture of these years is further distinguished by the quiet posture of its figures and a weak vitality of expression. Later, however, the statues became more vivid, and the forms softer and more dynamic. There was an increased search for naturalness. Wavy lines became German sculpture’s characteristic of the time. Artists’ favoured material was wood, which was soft and flexible and could be fashioned into the curved forms of young women and curly-headed girls. The graceful and vivid figures of Bamberg Cathedral bear witness to the great maturity and beauty of German sculpture (see p. 172, 173). The head of Henry II is of particular aesthetic interest.
When the Middle Ages turned into modernity at the end of the fifteenth century, Tilman Riemenschneider was the most significant late Gothic sculptor in Lower Franconia. His artistic expression in different media is of consistent quality. The influence of Niclas Gerhaert’s Dutch realism proved defining for Riemenschneider’s style and themes. Additionally, he managed to infuse his works with life. The fifteenth century was a time of change; the rise in realism became noticeable in people’s attitude towards the human condition and the sacred, thus also in Riemenschneider’s works. Artists such as Jörg Syrlin the Elder, Adam Krafft and Peter Vischer influenced Riemenschneider, but his art is squarely anchored in the Late Gothic. He wanted to clearly portray Christ’s suffering in his works. The Passion and the Deposition of the Cross were his main themes, which he showed with great compassion. His portraits, particularly of knights and women, are characterised by great sensitivity and distinctive naturalism.
Veit Stoss, who had to live through unusual highs and lows, placed his narrative scenes into complex Gothic frames, which he filled with melancholy figures. His altarpiece in St. Mary Church in Cracow is the largest carved polyptych altarpiece in the German Gothic. The folds of the garments clearly show the manner of late Gothic style, his characters express characteristic emotional movement. This kind of expressionism can also be found in late Gothic painting and would be rediscovered by German expressionists in the twentieth century.
Only a few names of sculptors are known from Romanesque times. This changes in the Gothic period, because artists were revered for their own work and no longer seen as henchmen of the church. This is an important symptom for the ongoing discovery of man and the world, and a first sign of the transition to the Renaissance and modernity.
In France, the home of Gothic architecture, sculpture developed in the same direction as the new building style. After a fast rise it achieved a high, but brief maturation. The astute sense for nature and the liveliness and natural talent inherent in Latin peoples were combined with a high aesthetic that had not been witnessed in the world of sculpture since the Greeks. The large number of sculptures, which spilled not only over the inner walls and the outer arches of the portals, but also over the main façade and the transepts of Rheims and Amiens Cathedrals (the transepts alone have more than 2000 statues and reliefs) were created in the relatively short period from 1240 to 1300. These figures display the entire development of French Gothic sculpture. Its peak can be witnessed in the larger than life statues at the portal of Reims Cathedral’s western façade. The remaining sculptural decoration of the same cathedral already shows the gradual decay that set in at the beginning of the fourteenth century.