Fig. 449.—Plan, Fontevrault.
This church has four domical bays to the nave almost identical with those at Angoulême. The church is now a prison, and in some obscure portion lie the beautiful effigies of King Henry II. of England and of Eleanor of Guienne, his queen; of Richard Cœur de Lion; and of Isabel of Angoulême, the queen of King John, and mother to the rebuilder of Westminster Abbey.
There are in this district of France fully forty domed churches, which I need not particularise, my main object being to show how perfectly compatible is the cupola with Gothic architecture.
The influence, however, of the dome extended, in France, far beyond the district in question; for we find it spreading eastward into Auvergne, and beyond that again to Lyons.
Fig. 450. Nôtre-Dame du Pont, Clermont.
In Auvergne it usually covers the intersection of cross churches beneath the tower; at Le Puy it is used in a very unusual form to cover, not only this central space, but the bays of the vaulting.
The nave is divided into oblong bays by transverse arches, and the intervals are reduced to elongated octagons by corbels, doing duty for pendentives, and these octagons are domed over on the angular system. The same form of covering exists at Ainay, near Lyons.[68]
I may mention that the pendentives in many of these French churches give place to corbels of varied design, as at Monthron, near Angoulême, Nôtre Dame des Dons at Avignon, and very many others. The last named dome rises into a beautiful tower, and I may mention that small lantern turrets are common upon the Aquitanian domes.