Though the cathedral of Amiens has lost its stained glass, it has retained that other glory of decorative art—its sculpture. The three western entrance arches, in nine orders, are sovereign compositions. Probably as a scheme of dogmatic theology Amiens is even more complete than Chartres or Rheims. The main façade, with its strong buttress lines unbroken from ground to tower, would be the grandest of all the Gothic frontispieces had it been completed as first planned. But only in its lower stories is it of the XIII century, and the towers scarcely rise above the enormous parallelogram.
At the trumeau of the central door stands le Beau Dieu of Amiens, of stronger personality than that of Rheims, a Christ of the West more than the East. “He is the master, wise, steadfast, fraternal, with the patience and the human sympathy that comprehend man’s eternal weaknesses.”[126] He treads on monsters that symbolize Satan and Sin: “Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk; the lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under foot.”[127] About him stand the best loved of all the saints, the apostles—plain, primitive men in whose upturned foreheads shines the serenity of certitude. We are His witnesses, they seem to be saying, and our testimony we sealed usque ad sanguinem: “That which we have seen and have heard we declare unto you....” “We were eyewitnesses of His greatness....” “This Voice we heard brought from heaven....” “These things we write to you that you may rejoice and your joy be full.” The prophets and patriarchs at Amiens’ portals lack the assurance of joy which shines in the faces of the humble men chosen for the hierarchy of the New Law; the earlier ones had not themselves seen and heard and touched.
Never was the meaning of the Messiah’s coming set forth more sublimely than in this archetype cathedral. The soul of the Middle Ages had brooded over the Gospels till it had pierced to their spiritual sense. “The house of the Lord built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone in whom all the building being framed together, growing up into an holy temple in the Lord.”[128]
When the apostles were placed at the cathedral doors, the tradition was to have St. Peter stand to the right of his Master, and St. Paul to the left; the latter was substituted for Matthias, elected to Judas’ place. St. Peter, tonsured, carried the key and a cross; his beard was short and curly. St. Paul bore a sword, since his Roman citizenship had saved him from death by crucifixion; he was represented with a bald forehead and a long beard. St. Andrew carried the peculiar-shaped cross on which he died; St. Bartholomew a knife, emblem of his martyrdom.
At the western doors of Amiens is an Annunciation group in which the Virgin is the prototype of the gentle Ancilla Domini at Rheims. The St. Elizabeth of the Visitation group is a noble aged woman; the St. Simeon of the Presentation has been called the Nunc dimittis in person. Local saints are in a position of honor at the right-hand door, the chief here being St. Firman, the first bishop of Amiens, and the pioneer who preached the Word in Picardy, where he was martyred in 289. On his tomb rose the first cathedral of the city. His statue at the trumeau is a masterpiece of its period.
In his Bible of Amiens,[129] Ruskin gives enlightening interpretations of the quatrefoils adorning the wall under the big images at the western entrance. Little genre studies of agricultural life typify the seasons, and the vices and virtues are rendered with movement and subtlety. There is a connection between certain of the small bas-reliefs and the large statues standing above them.
About 1288 they carved the images at the transept’s southern portal. Fifty years had elapsed since the making of the western entrance, and already the early reverential awe had passed away. Our Lady is now shown as a radiant young matron whose smile is somewhat mannered, but to call the charming vierge dorée “the soubrette of Picardy,” as did Ruskin, is an absurd exaggeration. The apostles are no longer of the ideal type. They are mediæval schoolmen, debating some point of dialectics.
Each century was to add to the sculpture of Amiens. André Beauneveu, an illustrious French-Flemish master, made buttress statues of Charles V and his sons, realistic portrait work. The king was one of the four Valois brothers who were, with the Avignon popes, the chief art patrons of the XIV century. As Amiens Cathedral suffered comparatively little during the two cataclysms which emptied the churches of France, it is still a museum of treasures. When, in 1562, the Huguenots, sword in hand, rushed into the church to shatter the altars, the town’s tocsin sounded and the citizens assembled in such numbers that they saved their church. Again, during the Revolution, when brutal soldiery began to mutilate the choir screen’s groups, the women of Amiens who lived about the cathedral lustily beat the vandals with chairs. Of course the Revolution set up here the usual altar with its living Goddess of Reason, Marat’s bust was honored, and over the portal was inscribed the grandiloquent boast: “Fanaticism is destroyed: Truth triumphs.”
The tombs, bas-reliefs, and paintings were left intact, as well as the famous carved stalls finished in 1522. In the choir-screen sculpture of XVI-century Gothic the Renaissance had only just begun to appear. St. Firman’s mission was related quaintly—no prudery shown in the scene of the baptism of Amiens’ first Christians. The life of St. John the Baptist was set forth because crusaders had brought his relics to this church from Constantinople. The tourist guide enjoys leading his clients behind Amiens’ sanctuary to show them a plump little cupid weeping a marble tear over the tomb of some good canon who founded a local orphanage. M. Durand remarks that for one who appreciates the magnificent bronze tombs of the bishop-builders, or the realistic late-Gothic groups of the choir screen, there are ten who are moved by that banal little ange pleurant.
In the transept are some marble slabs inscribed with the names of the presidents of a religious-literary association called Puy-Notre-Dame. Such Puys (from podium, or platform) were poetic contests that sprang up in the XIV century, with the disappearance of the wandering minstrels, and they led in turn to a real literary movement.[130] At Amiens it was the custom each year for a new picture in honor of Notre Dame to be presented to her church, and at the festival a poem was read in her praise. Eventually statues were substituted for pictures, which explains the wealth of XVII-century sculpture in the side chapels and aisles of Amiens Cathedral. A number of the ancient paintings have been placed in the Museum of the city, whose walls have been embellished by Puvis de Chavannes’ Ave Picardia nutrix.