Fig. 66.—Vézelay, La Madeleine.
seen in Saint Quiriace at Provins (cir. 1160) [(Fig. 31)] and in La Madeleine at Vézelay (cir. 1140-1180) [(Fig. 66)]. The latter is of especial interest because it shows some peculiar makeshifts in the matter of construction. Here the choir would seem to have been originally designed to consist of two rectangular bays with four-part vaults and an apse of five sides probably with a chevet like that at Saint Germer.[369] But by the time the western bay of the choir had been built up to the clerestory, it would seem as if a new idea of a seven-part chevet had come in, perhaps from Paris, and the next bay was subdivided so as to give seven equal sides to the new vault. Then to make all the bays of the same scale, the west bay was also subdivided, but this necessarily at the clerestory level, and covered with a six-part vault. This left nine bays for the chevet and as only seven were to be actually included beneath the radiants, a narrow rectangular four-part vault was used over that toward the choir. There now remained an apse in all respects like those of Saint Martin-des-Champs and of Saint Germain-des-Pres and it was similarly vaulted with a broken-ribbed vault whose keystone does not lie quite upon the transverse line between the first two piers of the apse proper. The chevet built upon these radiants differs, however, from those in Paris and at Saint Germer in having a decidedly domed up character. In other words, the windows do not rise more than half the distance from the impost of the radiants to their keystone.[370]
Buttressing-Ribbed Chevets
This type of chevet as developed at Paris and Vézelay played a large part in subsequent architecture, for out of it would seem to have sprung what will be for convenience termed the buttressing-ribbed chevet. Among the more important early chevets of this type are those over the apses of Noyon[371] transepts, of Saint Remi at Reims [(Fig. 64)], of Saint Leu d’Esserent (Oise), and of the cathedrals of Sens, Canterbury, Noyon, and others, all probably completed before 1180. Although differing in a number of details, these apses have certain features in common. They all include beneath the chevet the preceding bay of the church, and all have the same arrangement of ribs which are so placed that the two springing from the piers next beyond the apsidal arch on either side form a transverse arch against whose crown all the others abut ([Plate II-d.]). The object of this arrangement evidently lay in the desire of the builders to construct a distinct transverse arch between the curve of the apse and the rectangular bay included in the chevet and at the same time to employ the two ribs beyond those forming the arch, as buttresses, to offset the thrust of the remaining radiants. Thus when the rectangular bay was larger than those around the curve, as for example in the choir of Soissons cathedral [(Fig. 67)], the buttressing ribs were longer than the remainder of those forming the vault. This made the bay containing these two ribs precisely like one-half of a six-part vault, and as this method of vaulting was commonly used in the nave and choir of these churches this chevet was a very