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IV. INTERPRETATIONS.
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with the playing French fire of it; but wood-carving was the Picard's joy from his youth up, and, so far as I know, there is nothing else so beautiful cut out of the goodly trees of the world.
Sweet and young-grained wood it is: oak, trained and chosen for such work, sound now as four hundred years since. Under the carver's hand it seems to cut like clay, to fold like silk, to grow like living branches, to leap like living flame. Canopy crowning canopy, pinnacle piercing pinnacle—it shoots and wreathes itself into an enchanted glade, inextricable, imperishable, fuller of leafage than any forest, and fuller of story than any book.[1]
- ↑ Arnold Boulin, master-joiner (menuisier) at Amiens, solicited the enterprise, and obtained it in the first months of the year 1508. A contract was drawn and an agreement made with him for the construction of one hundred and twenty stalls with historical subjects, high backings, crownings, and pyramidal canopies. It was agreed that the principal executor should have seven sous of Tournay (a little less than the sou of France) a day, for himself and his apprentice, (three-pence a day the two—say a shilling a week the master, and sixpence a week the man,) and for the superintendence of the whole work, twelve crowns a year, at the rate of twenty-four sous the crown; (i.e., twelve shillings a year). The salary of the simple workman was only to be three sous a day. For the sculptures and histories of the seats, the bargain was made separately with Antoine Avernier, image cutter, residing at Amiens, at the rate of thirty-two sous (sixteen pence) the piece. Most of the wood came from Clermont en Beauvoisis, near Amiens; the finest, for the bas-reliefs, from Holland, by St. Valery and Abbeville. The Chapter appointed four of its own members to superintend the work: Jean Dumas, Jean Fabres, Pierre Vuaille, and Jean Lenglaché, to whom my authors (canons both) attribute the
