STATUES ON REVERSE SIDE OF DOORS AFTER FIRE, SEPT., 1914
The first row on the right is known as "The Knight's Communion"; a priest offers the Host to a knight wearing 13th century armour, and turns his back on another knight clothed in a leathern Carolingian tunic with iron scales, and armed with a small round buckler.
Above the door, a gallery with nine openings lights the triforium.
On the highest storey, the great rose-window occupies the whole breadth of the nave. It is the masterpiece of Bernard de Soissons (see p. [40]).
In the form of a gigantic flower with twelve petals, each of the latter is sub-divided by quatrefoils and trefoil archings. Its harmonious gracefulness and seeming lightness, in spite of the great thickness of its border (about 7 ft.), and mullions (about 2 ft. 6 in.), are very striking.
The stained-glass, which, with the stonework, formed a harmonious whole, was restored in modern times. The subject represented was: The Virgin surrounded by angels, kings and patriarchs.
The fire of 1914 destroyed the stained-glass.
The side-doors have only a quatrefoil rose-window (see pp. [25] and [34]), and their framework of niches consists only of four rows of two niches each. However, two lines of niches, in which are statues in demi-relief, form the contour of the arches which frame their top.
The subjects of the sculptures are allied, in the case of each door, to those of the outer decoration, i.e. "The Life of St. Stephen."
The wooden doors and their tambours were destroyed by the fire of September 19, 1914, which also disfigured or destroyed the statues framing them (see photos above).