LIMOGES
After a charming ride of fifty kilometres from Eymoutiers, we arrive at Limoges, sloping picturesquely up from the banks of the winding river Vienne. We elsewhere set out our reasons for believing that the Byzantine influence upon the beginnings of French art was first and most potently exercised at Limoges, the cradle of French enamel. After remaining dormant for centuries, the enameller’s art has again been quickened into life in its old home. Its younger sister, stained glass, however, never seems to have returned to its birthplace; in fact, if it were not necessary to pass through Limoges on our way north from Eymoutiers, we would not have included it in this trip. While the cathedral contains some fourteenth century glass, it lacks sufficient quantity or quality to repay one coming from a distance to see it. From Eymoutiers our route takes us through Limoges, and what it can show of glass, we, like conscientious pilgrims, must not fail to inspect. Now for the cathedral! Architecturally it is very satisfactory. Just inside the west door of the nave there is a finely-carved stone jubé or arch, in fact so good is it that we shall not see a better except in the little church of La Madeleine at Troyes, or in St. Etienne-du-Mont in Paris. Around the clerestory of the choir are thirteen double lancet windows, presented in the fourteenth century by Bishop Pierre Rodier. Unfortunately, only two of them (those of Ste. Valerie and St. Martial) are preserved intact, but the others have been so judiciously restored that we have a very good idea of how they originally looked. They consist of large coloured figures in canopies, surrounded, however, by too much grisaille. The revulsion from too little light in the preceding century sometimes produced the curse of too much in the fourteenth. This placing of subjects upon a light surface cannot help but cause an unpleasant contrast between its soft tone and the stronger colour of the figures. In the ambulatory chapels on the north side of the choir, there are two complete windows of this period, both of them grisaille with gay heraldic devices and coloured borders. In one the light field is arranged in quarries (diamond-shaped spaces), each quarry having its own little border of colour; this is very unusual. Here the contrast of rich tones and grisaille is not so disagreeable as in the clerestory. In the south transept is a large rose window containing conventional designs in red and blue, but no figures. We find the same objection to the placing of this window and to its construction that we did to the rose windows at Clermont-Ferrand: it is too high up and seems crowded against the roof, while its lines radiate so obviously from the centre as to make it resemble a wheel, whose spokes are too thick. The century before did well to have medallions placed around the central opening of its rose windows, for they gave the effect of a huge blossom and not the stiff look of a wheel. As we leave Limoges on our way to Poitiers we shall find, if we travel by automobile or bicycle, that the road along the Vienne, following the picturesque windings of that charming river, is one of the most delightful in all France.