EYMOUTIERS
When from the top of Clermont-Ferrand Cathedral we viewed the mountains of the Puy-de-Dôme range, it seemed not only that anyone planning a trip across them would have a difficult climb, but that any idea of going by train was an impossibility. Modern engineering skill, however, overcomes all obstacles, stops at nothing, and the railway awaits our command to take us over the mountains to Eymoutiers and Limoges. The grades are so steep that no expresses are attempted and therefore we have before us a tedious five-hour trip on a way train. The first and the last parts of this journey are very delightful for the automobilist or bicyclist, because of the views revealed from time to time by the windings of the road. More than half the trip, however, is quite uninteresting, as the way lies through clefts in the hills at too great an elevation for much foliage or verdure. When we descend to the village of Eymoutiers on the other side of the mountains, all the difficulties and tedium of our climb will be forgotten. There the traveller will find a charming little inn by the river, where he can have a delicious repast of trout from the neighbouring mountain stream. He will be served on a cosy terrace, which is sheltered from the sun by vines and cooled by a tinkling fountain shooting into the air a slender spray of icy water. As a glass shrine, Eymoutiers is one of the most delightful that our pilgrim will meet on his travels and one to which his memory will often pleasantly revert. He need not look about for a cathedral or for any great religious edifice. Instead, he will find a quaint, oddly-shaped church whose older western half is so dimly lighted by its few deeply-embrasured windows as to provide an excellent foil for the silvery light of the fourteen that illumine the eastern half. We cannot properly call it the choir end, because the church seems to have three choirs placed side by side, opening into each other, the central one extending a little more to the east than its two sisters. At the Ste. Chapelle in Paris we have observed that the deeply-hued medallion windows of the thirteenth century were not suited to a small interior—that their materials and construction required that they be viewed from the greater distance afforded within a cathedral in order to yield to the observer a properly combined glow from their warmth of colour. On the other hand, at Eymoutiers, we shall learn that the canopy window is as beautiful in its soft lighting of a small interior as at Bourges it is appropriate in the lower windows of a great nave, or at Quimper in its delicate illumination of a splendid clerestory. Before we have been long in the little Eymoutiers church we shall begin to notice that the later windows in the central eastern bay have much more colour than the earlier ones in the right and left ones. In these two side bays the figures have only one colour besides white in their costumes, and but one also in the backgrounds; while on the other hand, in the central bay the figures have never less than two colours in their costumes; and further, that besides the one in their backgrounds, an additional colour is there contributed by a curtain stretched across the niches, shoulder-high, behind the figures. Then, too, these later figures in the central bay have coloured halos, and the little ceilings under the canopies beneath which they stand are brightly tinted. The local authorities date the glazing of the central bay from the latter part of the fifteenth century and that of the two side ones from the middle. The difference in the colour schemes of the two sets confirms this dating. This same marked difference in the number of colours exists at Quimper, where the choir windows glazed in the first years of the fifteenth century have but few tints, while, on the other hand, there are many in those of the nave which date from the latter part of that century. As accentuating this enrichment of the artist’s palette which the passage of time seemed to effect, it is noticeable that the early tracery lightings of the two side bays are very light in tone, being mostly white or some faint hue or yellow stain, while the later traceries of the central bay contain deep reds and blues, etc. A close examination of these windows repays us by revealing several quaint manifestations of the strict adherence to tradition for which the mediæval glass artists are noted. Contemporary conventions demanded that St. Christopher have a tessellated pavement as the floor of his canopy, but the legend requires that he must stand in water, so we find not only the pavement but also upon it a semi-circular pool of water in which the saint stands. So, too, the Virgin Mary is poised upon a halfmoon-shaped cloud, neatly balanced on the conventional pavement. Though these little touches make us moderns smile, they were doubtless at the time approved as showing that the artist was well schooled. Our reader should make every effort to visit Eymoutiers, for there he will truly feel the delicate charm of the canopy window. The church is glazed throughout in one style and as a type of perfection will linger in his memory in much the same way as Ste. Foy at Conches, which we will visit later for its sixteenth century glass. The canopy window, when properly placed, yields a far softer beauty than any glass can show in the century before or the century that came after, and it is greatly to be regretted that so few of them survived the stress of those battle-troubled days.
Before we start on our way over rolling hills to Limoges, we must not fail to observe in Eymoutiers a certain quaint custom of building distinctive of that town. The topmost story of almost all the dwelling-houses is not walled up on the street side. This open top floor is used to store fuel. Under the eaves there is a pulley by which the bundles of wood are pulled up from the street by a block and tackle and swung in under the roof.
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.