[M2.171L]                                                             [M2.171]								171
                                                                      			Lyons Cathedral
The sculptures described opposite are of great importance             
as giving the Lombard hunting and fantastic spirit with               		4.   A bird putting its head between its legs to bite its
Gothic feeling and style fully developed and yet with a               		own tail, which ends in a head.
grace in the single figures like Pisan work:  It is most              		5.   A dragon with a human head, set on the wrong way.
necessary to verify their date to be compared with the                		6.   St Peter awaked by the angel in prison:  full of
sculptures on the facade of Bourges, when the feeling                 		spirit, the prison picturesque, with a trefoiled arch:
has sunk into one of entire repose;  and the subjects                 		the angel eager, St Peter startled and full of motion.
are altogether sacred.   No more phantasms - no more                  		7.  St Peter led out by the angel.
feverish visions;  a regular history of the old testament             		8.   The mirac. draught of fishes, fish and all in the
in quiet procession round the arches - no more leaping                		small space
wrestling, galloping - or sword playing.  Gentle                      		9.   A large leaf, with two snails rampant coming out of
figures with falling draperies who rarely do more than                		nautilus shells, with grotesque faces and eyes at the ends
lift their hands:  (Except when Cain kills Abel) men under            		of their horns very large.
the strongest excitement;  and yet all this with a                    		10.   A man with an axe, striking at a dog’s head which
picturesqueness of grouping - a power of grotesque when it is         		comes out of a nautilus shell:  the rim of the shell
admitted, and a redundant variety, as far removed from                		branches into a stem with two large leaves.
Byzantine languor on the one hand, as from Lombard fury               		11.   Martyrd of St Sebastian - his body very  full of
on the other.  The connection with both schools is however            		arrows.
traceable here and there, in the interlaced                           		12.   Beasts coming to ark:  Noah opening above a kind of
dragons necks of the tympanum string course;  for                     		wicker cage?
instance, very Byzantine and the dragons with leaf tails              		13.   Noah building the ark on shores, excellent.
in the sculpture of the Creation.  Now:  Lyons and                    		14.   A vine leaf with a dragon head and tail, the one
the North door of Rouen, which are in all respects allied             		biting the other.
are a far purer and more perfect Gothic than this of Bourges          		15.   A man riding a goat, catching a flying devil.
The niche of Lyons - though still retaining the turrets at            		16.   An eel or murena growing into a bunch of flowers,
angles is incomparably more finely touched and more perfectly         		which turns into two wings.
systematized, and the traceries above in the
pediment are the purest Gothic;  which here at Bourges we
have only in an extraordinary development of the earlier
and cruder ideas of pierced {circular} windows - 
lozenges - 6 foils, &c  and then this fiery school of
Rouen and Lyons

[Version 0.05: May 2008]