A quiet and inconspicuous example of exquisite refinement in Gothic bas-relief is to be seen in the medallioned "Portail aux Libraires" at the Cathedral in Rouen. This doorway was built in 1278 by Jean Davi, who must have been one of the first sculptors of his time. The medallions are a series of little grotesques, some of them ineffably entertaining, and others expressive of real depth of knowledge and thought. Ruskin has eulogized some of these little figures: one as having in its eye "the expression which is never seen but in the eye of a dog gnawing something in jest, and preparing to start away with it." Again, he detects a wonderful piece of realism and appreciative work in the face of a man who leans with his head on his hand in thought: the wrinkles pushed up under his eye are especially commended.
In the south transept at Amiens is a piece of elaborate sculpture in four compartments, which are the figures of many saints. There is a legend in connection with those figures: when the millers were about to select a patron saint, they agreed to choose the saint on whose head a dove, released for the purpose, should alight; but as the bird elected to settle on the head of a demon, they abandoned their plan! The figures in these carvings are almost free of the ground; they appear to be a collection of separate statuettes, the scenes being laid in three or four planes. It is not restrained bas-relief; but the effect is extremely rich. The sculptures in high relief, but in more conventional proportion than these, which occur on the dividing wall between the choir and the north aisle, are thoroughly satisfactory. They are coloured; they were executed in 1531, and they represent scenes in the life of the Baptist. In the panel where Salomé is portrayed as dancing, a grave little monkey is seen watching her from under the table. The similar screen surrounding the sanctuary at Paris was the work of the chief cathedral architect, Jean Renoy, with whom worked his nephew, Jehan le Bouteiller. These stone carved screens are quite usual in the Ile de France. The finest are at Chartres, where they go straight around the ambulatory, the whole choir being fenced in, as it were, about the apse, by this exquisite work. This screen is more effective, too, for being left in the natural colour of the stone: where these sculptures are painted, as they usually are, they suggest wood carvings, and have not as much dignity as when the stone is fully recognized.
The Door of St. Marcel has the oldest carving on Notre Dame in Paris. The plate representing the iron work, in Chapter IV., shows the carving on this portal, which is the same that has Biscornette's famous hinges. The central figure of St. Marcel himself presents the saint in the act of reproving a naughty dragon which had had the indiscretion to devour the body of a rich but wicked lady. The dragon is seen issuing from the dismantled tomb of this unfortunate person. The dragon repented his act, when the saint had finished admonishing him, and showed his attachment and gratitude for thus being led in paths of rectitude, by following the saint for four miles, apparently walking much as a seal would walk, beseeching the saint to forgive him. But Marcel was firm, and punished the serpent, saying to him: "Go forth and inhabit the deserts or plunge thyself into the sea;" and, as St. Patrick rid the Celtic land of snakes, so St. Marcel seems to have banished dragons from fair France.
| CARVINGS AROUND CHOIR AMBULATORY, CHARTRES |
At Chartres there are eighteen hundred statues, and almost as many at Amiens and at Rheims and Paris. One reason for the superiority of French figure sculpture in the thirteenth century, over that existing in other countries, is that the French used models. There has been preserved the sketch book of a mediæval French architect, Vilard de Honcourt, which is filled with studies from life: and why should we suppose him to be the only one who worked in this way?
Rheims Cathedral is the Mecca of the student of mediæval sculpture. The array of statues on the exterior is amazing, and a walk around the great structure reveals unexpected riches in corbels, gargoyles, and other grotesques, hidden at all heights, each a veritable work of art, repaying the closest study, and inviting the enthusiast to undue extravagance at a shop in the vicinity, which advertises naïvely, that it is an "Artistical Photograph Laboratory."
On the door of St. Germain l'Auxerrois in Paris, there is a portrait statue of St. Geneviève, holding a lighted candle, while "the devil in little" sits on her shoulder, exerting himself to blow it out! It is quite a droll conceit of the thirteenth century.
Of the leaf forms in Gothic sculpture, three styles are enough to generalize about. The early work usually represented springlike leaves, clinging, half-developed, and buds. Later, a more luxuriant foliage was attempted: the leaves and stalks were twisted, and the style was more like that actually seen in nature. Then came an overblown period, when the leaves were positively detached, and the style was lost. The foliage was no longer integral, but was applied.
There is little of the personal element to be exploited in dealing with the sculptors in the Middle Ages. Until the days of the Renaissance individual artists were scarcely recognized; master masons employed "Imagers" as casually as we would employ brick-layers or plasterers; and no matter how brilliant the work, it was all included in the general term "building."
The first piece of signed sculpture in France is a tympanum in the south transept at Paris, representing the Stoning of Stephen. It is by Jean de Chelles, in 1257. St. Louis of France was a patron of arts, and took much interest in his sculptors. There were two Jean de Montereau, who carved sacred subjects in quite an extraordinary way. Jean de Soignoles, in 1359, was designated as "Macon et Ymageur." One of the chief "imageurs," as they were called, was Jacques Haag, who flourished in the latter half of the fifteenth century, in Amiens. This artist was imprisoned for sweating coin, but in 1481 the king pardoned him. He executed large statues for the city gates, of St. Michael and St. Firmin, in 1464 and 1489. There was a sculptor in Paris in the fourteenth century, one Hennequin de Liege, who made several tombs in black and white marble, among them that of Blanche de France, and the effigy of Queen Philippa at Westminster.