The portion of the Gothic building where figure sculpture is chiefly displayed is the western façade, though other parts of the exterior are also more or less profusely adorned with figures. In a cathedral of the first order, such as Paris, Chartres, Amiens, or Reims, there are altogether many hundreds of sculptured figures. Gathered principally within the widely splayed portals, there is often, in addition, as at Paris, Amiens, and Reims, a row of colossal statues just above them extending across the entire front. And beside these there are figures under canopies of the buttresses, as well as gargoyles, and grotesque creatures projecting from the cornice, or ranged upon the parapet.
Of all the great façades that of the Cathedral of Paris is the most important in point of sculpture. Begun in the very first years of the thirteenth century, it exhibits the finest work of the French carvers during the entire first quarter of that century. No other church, not even that of Amiens, affords so fine a display, notwithstanding that a great part of it has perished by violence. Of its three great portals nearly all the sculptures of the tympanums and archivolts remain substantially unimpaired. The north door is the earliest, dating from about 1205,[1] it being here that the erection of the facade was commenced. The sculpture of the tympanum is thus in date not long subsequent to that of Senlis; but in point of freedom and skill in the rendering of form there is a marked advance. This tympanum is divided horizontally into two compartments. In the upper compartment is represented the coronation of the Virgin, and in the lower compartment (Fig. 172) her entombment. Such skilful treatment of form and such beauty of modelling had not before been seen since the classic times of antiquity. The remarkable likeness to certain qualities of Greek art here exhibited is both noticeable and instructive. This does not result from imitation; for original Greek art was, of course, not known to the carvers of the time, and the likeness is not superficial (as it would be in imitative art), but fundamental. It came rather through the free study of nature, which, with men
- ↑ See Viollet-le-Duc, s.v. Porte, p. 421. Guilhermy, Itinéraire Archéologique de Paris, says, p. 24, that the west façade was not begun till near the end of the episcopate of Pierre de Nemours (1208-1219).
