Bernard Smith Collection
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Bernard Smith was an Australian art historian, art critic and academic, including at the University of Melbourne. He has been described as the founder of Australian Art History, and his presence and influence in Australian cultural life immense. This is one of many of his lectures given in the Fine Arts Department of the University of Melbourne between 1956 and 1966 and at a time when it was the only art history department in an Australian university. They are lectures in the history of art that range from Palaeolithic to the Romantic Movement. These lectures are presented as originally written and are archival in nature with no attempt to bring them up-to-date. They belong to their time
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ItemThirteenth century Gothic in Italy(1956-1966)LectureIn my last lecture we considered the development of Gothic sculpture up to the high point of its achievement in the sculpture of the west portals of Rheims Cathedral which are dated to 1225; that is to the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Let us look at the Visitation group again. We know that this sculpture was inspired in part by classical models. Rheims itself originally a Roman city, Durocortorum, and the centre of a Roman vine growing and wine producing region. But the importance of the Rheims sculpture does not consist simply in the fact that it was in part inspired by classical models. More important is the fact that within the Gothic style a distinctly classical feeling has been captured without destroying or overwhelming the Gothic quality so that here we can reasonably talk about a Gothic classicism, a classical feeling at the high point of the style itself, which is not dependent upon individual models it is inherent in the development of the style itself. Panofsky calls the classicism of Rheims sculpture an 'intrinsic classicism'.