According to the lecture Georgio Vasari (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/623661/Giorgio-Vasari) an Italian painter, architect, and writer, felt that Gothic art was monstrous and barbarous... He felt that the barbarians had destroyed the classical art of Rome. I felt the same way when looking at the beautiful development of art in Greece and Rome, I felt as though things had taken a huge step back when looking at Romanesque and Gothic art. But where they flattened and distorted what our eye would see, the religious and symbolic additions to the work and the grandeur that the church afforded the artists who created for them makes up for the realism that is lacking.

All the creativity of the time seems to have been funneled into the church structures which are lyrical and soaring in the Gothic period. Where the Romanesque churches seem solid and block-y the Gothic churches use beautiful carving and lines to illustrate the height of religious passions many times adding on to existing Romanesque churches. In the the Gothic period the focus becomes more on salvation rather then damnation which is what the Romanesque carvings and scenes portrayed. The figures from the in Gothic art become more expressive and are in higher relief freeing them from the background, whereas the relief sculptures of the Romanesque cathedrals are in lower relief and look stiff, stoic and almost without expression - the figures are cruder and the themes are darker. The contrast in style and emergence of a more classical and naturalistic way of seeing things is seen here the figures from the center of Chartres South Porch jamb dating from the mid-12th century are beautifully rendered and almost free standing where as "The Last Judgement" relief sculpture in tympanum from Conques, France done in 1130 A.D.