having been
introduced by Bonacci of Pisa (a fellow-citizen of Niccola) in 1202.
That they are found here before the middle of the century is a fairly
conclusive proof that the workers were Italians, and very likely from
Pisa itself. Jocelin, indeed, was English, but he had been in exile
from 1208 to 1213, when he had ample opportunity of studying the work
of the Italian artists. Pleasant as it would be to our national pride,
we can hardly believe that Englishmen produced what seems to be the
earliest example of such magnificent and varied sculpture in
north-western Europe. At Jocelin's death, in 1242, when the work had
been going on for some thirty years, Niccola Pisano was in his prime,
Cimabue was two years old, and forty years had yet to elapse before
the rival sculpture of Amiens Cathedral was executed.

[Illustration: West Front: Christina (185). Drawn by H.P. Clifford.]

Mr Ruskin, whose admiration of the work at Amiens is so intense, has
given almost as high praise to the sculpture at Wells, and has
presented sets of photographs of the statuary to various art schools.
The verdict of enthusiastic approval is, in fact, unanimous. Flaxman,
to his credit, in spite of his classicalism, was one of the first to
draw attention to the work. Whoever was the general designer of the
whole arrangement, he deserves as great praise as the sculptors
themselves. There must have been several sculptors, both because no
one man could have carved three hundred and fifty subjects (of which
one hundred and fifty-two are life-size or colossal), and because a
certain number of the figures in the fourth and fifth tiers are of
obviously inferior design. But one master-mind must have conceived and
directed the work. The height and lightness which is given to the
gable by the tall row of the Apostles, the solemn prominence of the
figure of our Lord above, the rich cornice-like effect of the small
Resurrection tier, the difference in height between the fourth and
fifth tiers, the concentration of the three lower tiers, the breadth
which the seated figures give to the face of the buttresses, the
arrangement of the statues and groups round the buttresses, which
makes it impossible for them all to be seen at once, all show that one
mind was busy, carefully subordinating the parts to the whole.

It may well have been Jocelin himself who planned the subject-matter
of the statuary with such admirable breadth and balance of mind. It is
easy to p