242

Sculpture in the Gothic Period. We must say one word, before we close our review of mediaeval sculpture, on the enamels of which every museum and private collection of Europe contains speci- mens. Enamelling, or the art of producing vitrified or smelted glass ornaments of various colours on a metal ground, occupied a kind of intermediate position between sculpture and painting. It was largely employed through- out the whole of the middle ages for the manufacture of shrines, reliquaries, diptychs, and other church utensils. The South Kensington Museum contains many speci- mens of different dates, of which a large Byzantine Shrine or Reliquary of the twelfth century, in the form of a Byzantine church with a dome, is the most valuable. The English sculptures of the Gothic period will be noticed in the chapter on sculpture in Great Britain.