THE LATE GOTHIC STYLE C. I25O-C. IfOO
It might be said that German Late Gothic decoration is as extreme as
Spanish, which would not be surprising, since Germany and Spain, as
against France, England, Italy, are the countries of the extremes in
European civilisation. However, there are obvious differences between
the Spanish, and the German ways of decorating. Ever since Moham-
medan days Spain has had a passion for filling large surfaces with close-
knit two-dimensional ornament. The Germans share this horror
vacui, but there is always a marked spatial curiosity in their ornament.
That connects German Late Gothic with German Rococo just as the
flatness and the frantic movement of the Charterhouse vestry at
Granada, which dates from the middle of the i8th century (see
p. 133), seems heralded in the details of the Valladolid facade.
Valladolid has no dominant motifs. The figure sculpture is petty in
scale. Ogee arches and "Tudor" arches (i.e. depressed pointed
arches) follow each other. The background is patterned from top to
bottom, and the patterns change with every string course. There
is something of a thistly undergrowth about this ensemble which
makes English Perpendicular appear strong and pure. There can
be no question which of the two countries would open itself to
Puritanism and which would become the stronghold of Baroque
Catholicism.
The high-water mark, however, of Late Gothic frenzy was
reached in Portugal during the spectacularly prosperous age of King
Manuel (1495-1521), Manueline decoration in such places as Batalha
• and Tomar (fig. 41) is outrageously rich, a rank growth of forms,
sometimes taken, it seems, from crustacean organisms, sometimes
from tropical vegetation. Much Portuguese decoration was inspired
by Spain and France, but here the architecture of India, Portuguese
India, is the only parallel that comes to mind. If this connection is
real it is the first instance in Western history of non-European
influence on European art.
However, no influence can ever act, unless the one party is ready
to receive the message of the other. If die countries of the Pyrenean
Peninsula had not already been possessed by a passion for overdone
decoration, the art of the colonies would have remained mute to
them* "When the Indies became Dutch, their style did indeed after
a time begin to influence the furniture of Holland and helped to give
it its peculiar Baroque opulence, but architects wisely kept away
from it. The Dutchmen of the lyth century could never have made
of it what the Portuguese could, at that particular moment, the
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