APPENDIX, 8 433

more interesting indeed, generally, than beautiful; but there is a row of niches on the west front of Lyons, and a course of panelled decoration about its doors, which is, without exception, the most exquisite piece of Northern Gothic I ever beheld, and with which I know nothing that is even comparable, except the work of the north transept at Rouen, described in the Seven Lamps, V., § 23; work of about the same date, and exactly the same plan; quatrefoils filled with grotesques, but somewhat less finished in execution, and somewhat less wild in imagination. I wrote down hastily, and in their own course, the subjects of some of the quatrefoils of Lyons; of which I here give the reader the sequence:-

1. Elephant and castle; less graphic than the St. Zeno one.

2. A huge head walking on two legs, turned backwards, hoofed; the head has a horn behind, with drapery over it, which ends in another head.¹

3. A boar hunt; the boar under a tree, very spirited.

4. A bird putting its head between its legs to bite its own tail, which ends in a head.

5. A dragon with a human head set on the wrong way.

6. St. Peter awaked by the angel in prison; full of spirit, the prison picturesque, with a trefoiled arch, the angel eager, St. Peter startled, and full of motion.

7. St. Peter led out by the angel.

8. The miraculous draught of fishes; fish and all, in the small space.

9. A large leaf, with two snails rampant, coming out of nautilus shells with grotesque faces, and eyes at the ends of their horns.

10. A man with an axe, striking at a dog’s head, which comes out of a nautilus shell: the rim of the shell branches into a stem with two large leaves.

11. Martyrdom of St. Sebastian; his body very full of arrows.

12. Beasts coming to ark; Noah opening a kind of wicker cage.

13. Noah building the ark on shores.

subjects. [Here follows the list in the text above, and the diary proceeds on the page facing the list.] The sculptures described opposite are of great importance as giving the Lombard hunting and fantastic spirit with Gothic feeling and style fully developed and yet with a grace in the single figures like Pisan work. It is most necessary to verify their date to be compared with the sculpture on the facade of Bourges, where the feeling has sunk into one of entire repose, and the subjects are altogether sacred. No more phantasms-no more feverish visions; a regular history of the Old Testament in quiet procession round the arches-no more leaping, wrestling, galloping, or sword playing. Gentle figures with falling draperies who rarely do more than lift their hands (except when Cain kills Abel), even under the strongest excitement, and yet all this with a picturesqueness of grouping-a power of grotesque when it is admitted and a redundant variety, as far removed from Byzantine languor on the one hand, as from Lombard fury on the other. The connection between both schools is however traceable here and there, in the interlaced dragons’ necks of the tympanum string-course, for instance,-very Byzantine; and the dragons with leaf tails in the sculpture of the Creation.”

The panelled decorations of sacred subjects are described at some length and illustrated by woodcuts in Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 37 and figs. 13, 15.]

¹ [The diary adds: “like Lord Brougham.”]

IX. 2E

[Version 0.04: March 2008]