Amiens' Sculpture

While Chartres has the most intact stained glass, Amiens has the more intact sculpture. Here is a sampling, all pretty much 13th century.

Just about everything that follows is from the west side,
but this venerated Virgin and Child is from the south...
moved indoors now to protect from the elements, a copy
in her place on the porch outside

Assorted saints, apostles, whatever, atop, but in the quadrifoils below, the
activities of the months (think Zodiac)

Last Judgment; so-so, but nice Jaws of Hell on the right

Wise Virgins (the vertical panel), their lamps held upwards;
a healthy tree at the bottom

Foolish Virgins, empty lamps, dead tree

More saints, et al.; more quadrifoils, this time representing vices and virtues

Closer up on the condemned

A Mary sequence in pairs: Annunciation, Visitation, Presentation

Top quadrifoil: things fall apart

Above Mary and Baby J, the Ark of the Covenant, and to its right, Moses (with
horns; this was a translation issue, like virgin)

Rats in Jerusalem (things really falling apart)

Things really, really, falling apart

On a more cheerful note, warming before a fire in the winter
months

Not all the sculpture is outside; here is one of two bronze 13th century sarcaphogi

Amiens 2

Outside, south side of the apse, a forest of flying buttresses

Northside

A line of gargoyles

View from the Somme

The Sommes in Amiens

After only a few hundred years subsidence was noted in
the building--the cathedral is only a hundred meters or so
from the river--and huge metal spikes such as this were
driven in various places; that was the 16th or 17th century,
I think; things have held up well enough since...

View of the great cathedral from the south side, along one of Amiens' fashionable
streets (we took a lunch break); note interesting playground

Back at the cathedral later, we ran into a group of young school-children en
field trip; decked in their little striped vests, each one wearing a big name-tag,
with picture, contact information...

Nothing quite like the enthusiasm of children

Amiens 1

After Noyon we drove on to Amiens and spent one night at the Parc des Cygnes campground (which charges roughly 1 euro per hour for wifi; at so many others it is free). The next morning we drove into Amiens, looking for a camping aire, never found it, but did find suitable free parking about a kilometer from the great church. Amiens Cathedral is one of the big three or four "classic" Gothic cathedrals in France, along with Chartres, Bourges, Reims, and maybe another few, all done in the late 12th-13th century. Amiens is the biggest and highest of them and also has notable sculpture. I'll divide our pix into three posts and then usual sacreligious out-takes.

West facade; we'll return to look at the portal sculptures later

Amiens has a maze, like Chartres; here Vicki has again found its
center

Nave view; Amiens' immensity really is awe-inspiring...

Elevation...aisles, blind triforia, huge clerestory windows;
four-part vaulting

Crossing, way, way up there

From the crossing looking back west

In one of the aisles, incredible height

Apse-ward

Amiens has glass, but apparently not of the age nor quality
of Chartres; looks pretty good to me...

Even with the rose windows, it is the tracery you find
yourself impressed by, not so much the glass

The famous ribbon of leaves that runs the length of the cathedral between the aisle
and triforium

Noyon Cathedral

Those (Tawana, Wes) following us on the Cathedral trail know that the next stop would be Noyon, another transitional Gothic. Noyon is in the Oise, WWI country, still not very far from Paris. Vicki's distant and dubious relation, Robert Louis Stevenson, praised Noyon's cathedral in his An Inland Journey.

West facade; the symmetry ends here...there
are many out-buildings, including a large
refectory adjacent to the north side of the west
porch; Noyon is pretty old for a Gothic,
mid-12th

There's hardly a grain of sculpture at Noyon;
all removed, presumably by the masses
during the Revolution; except for a few
gargoyles

Knave view; note alternating piers and columns; the vault
originally was of the earlier six-part style, with the alternating
arrangement; after a fire way back in 1293, it was replaced
with the by-then standard four-part

Elevation: interesting! relatively large aisles,
galleries, blind triforium, smallish clerestory
windows; we've seen few Gothics with
galleries. one of the first Romanesque
features to go

Perhaps Noyon's most interesting facet is its
use of rounded transept ends; virtually all
Romanesques and Gothics have rounded
apses--that's how the Romans built their
basilicas, which the Christians mostly copied;
this is the north transept; rounded

There's some nice-looking glass, but it's not
what you come here for..it's the architecture

Looking from altar back to the west

Apse and altar view

Interesting  (to me) sculpture department: Joan of Arc was
converted from witch to saint only in the 20th century; well,
yes, she spent several hundred years merely as a martyr;
the sculpture here presumably depicts a "sacred
conversation" involving her and the then-pope and his
assistants; life-sized too

Ditto; she was canonized in 1920; the English
might have objected, but they no longer had
privilege of the floor; so to speak; that's a joke,
son

We are now in the cloister adjoining the church and
refectory, admiring a very old well and then noting that the
arches supporting the vaulting above are listing seriously 
to port; we decided to move on to the cathedral's exterior

From the south; note the severe right angles
on the towers; Noyon has plenty of  integral
buttresses, but flying buttresses only at the
apse I think

High on the south-side apse, about the only exterior
sculpture remaining

This is/was the chapter library, adjoining the cathedral; built
of wood, resting on a wall; dated 1506; personally, I like
storing my books in less fire-prone situations; but this one
has indeed stood the test of time

Carving on a library pier; no termites, either

The old-fashioned way...paving a drive-way in Noyon

A pretty town; most of it post-WWI...