The cathedral of Dol—which Stendhal admired beyond others in France—is a melancholy severe granite edifice, though probably the best Gothic of the province. Characteristics both of Normandy and the Ile-de-France appear in it. Two of the wholly detached colonnettes of each pier are now clamped with metal bands, and the wide arches of the triforium would be better suited to open on a gallery than as they are at present—set close to a blank wall; a few doors in the wall give on the lean-to roof over the aisles. The structure of the church demonstrates that, as the works rose, extra supports were added for stability.
The cathedral was begun by its nave soon after a conflagration of the town, in 1203, caused by the troops of John Lackland. Vestiges only of the wrecked church were retained. The façade’s southern tower is late work, despite its Romanesque character, and its fellow belfry to the north is in larger part of the XVI century. Out of the nave’s southern flank opens a graceful XIII-century porch. The choir, which ends in a flat eastern wall, was finished by 1265, when was installed its splendid big window of eight medallion panels that set forth the Last Judgment. In the XIV century was opened the arch leading to the Lady chapel of that same date, wherein were used various supplementary ribs, around windows and in corners, to obviate the difficulty of vaulting a square-ended edifice. To the XIV century, too, belong the side chapels of the choir, and the big porch of St. Magloire before the transept’s southern door.
Against the blank wall that closes the north arm of the transept stands the much-discussed Renaissance tomb of Bishop Thomas James. It is an initial work of the Juste brothers of Tours, the ablest among the Italians who brought the new art standards across the Alps. The bishop’s recumbent image has disappeared. From 1482 to 1504 he held the see of Dol, though only in residence after 1486, as he lived in Rome, the papal guardian of the castle of St. Angelo. In his testament he requested a simple burial, but his nephews—whose profiles adorn the tomb—chose to erect this elaborate monument, whose cream-colored fine-grained stone, delicately arabesqued, contrasts happily with the dark granite walls. One of the nephews had known the Juste, or Betti brothers, in Florence, and through him those artists came to France. In his prime Jean Juste made the tomb of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany for the Royal Abbey at St. Denis.
THE CATHEDRAL AT NANTES[380]
Très crestien, franc royaume de France,
Dieu a les braz ouvers pour t’acoler,
Prest d’oublier ta vie pécheresse:
Requier pardon, bien te vendra aidier
Nostre Dame, la très puissante princesse,
Qui est ton cry et que tiens pour maistresse.
Les saints aussy te viendront secourir,
Desquelz les corps font en toy demourance.
Ne vueilles plus en ton péchié dormir
Très crestien, franc royaume de France!
—Charles d’Orléans (1391-1465).
The cathedral of St. Peter, at Nantes, the third on the site, is a late-Gothic structure, not overvirile, somewhat artificial, but ingenious and elegant, even as is the contemporary verse of Charles d’Orléans, who was taken prisoner at Agincourt and passed half a lifetime in exile. M. Gaston Paris has drawn attention to the similarity between XV-century architecture and XV-century poetry. Is not that bijou of artistry, the chapel of St. Hubert, which Anne of Brittany’s first husband set on the cliff edge at Amboise, of the same quality as a rondel of the poet-duke’s? Is not Villon’s ironic, tragically-true note reflected in the Dance of Death painted on church walls during those years of pest and internecine strife? Brittany has retained one of the only two surviving danses macabres, in the hamlet of Kermaria,[381] the house of Mary, that lies between the villages of Plehedel and Plouha. In Auvergne, at La Chaise Dieu, is the other.
In 1431 Jean V, of the third ducal line of Brittany, the de Montforts, decided to remake the cathedral of the outpost city wherein stood his castle. Nantes never was Bretagne bretonnante, being differentiated from Finistère amid its rocky seacoast, by its position on the Loire of commerce and art. That wonderful river, in an eight-hundred-mile course from Languedoc to Brittany, passes some of the fairest monuments of France: Le Puy, Nevers, La Charité, St. Satur, St. Benoît, Orléans, Blois, Chaumont, Amboise, Tours, Langeais—where Anne of Brittany wedded Charles VIII—Saumur, St. Florent, Gennes, Cunault, and the castle and cathedral of Nantes.
Under ducal patronage the nave of Nantes Cathedral rose apace; the capitals of its north side have deeply undercut curly-tipped foliage, but on the nave’s south side the piers lack capitals altogether. The interior of the church is of glacial aspect; light floods it pitilessly. Its eastern end is modern. In 1886 was unearthed a Romanesque crypt which Abélard must have known, for he was born in a manor close by Nantes, and returned to live here in 1136.
Guillaume Dammartin, of the notable family of Flamboyant Gothic architects, is mentioned as working on Nantes Cathedral, and M. Arthur de la Borderic, Brittany’s historian, has discovered that an artist of Tours, Mathelin Rodier, was master-of-works when the western portals were sculptured (1470-80), and while the stately inner-court façade of the duke’s château was rising. In that castle Anne of Brittany was born in 1477, became a reigning duchess at twelve years of age, and in its chapel was married, in 1499, to Louis XII. On her deathbed she willed her heart to her native city. She completed the castle of Nantes by what is called the Horseshoe Tower overlooking the river.
Anne must have known the master, Mathelin Rodier, who made the portals of the cathedral, decorating them with the same undercut leaf foliation, the same lavish splayed ornaments as adorn the contemporary western doors of Tours Cathedral, a hundred and thirty miles to the east. The larger statues at Nantes’ entrances have been destroyed, but in the voussures are many small groups, sometimes with four or five personages in a scene, chiseled with natural attitudes and expressive faces. One of the portals commemorates St. Peter (observe the Quo Vadis episode), another, St. Paul, while the place of honor is given to the Saviour. Within the church, under the organ, are XV-century statues, one of which represents the duke patron who began the cathedral, the grandfather of Anne of Brittany.