Arles cathedral
Excerpts from 'The Cathedrals of Southern France' by T Francis Bumpus, 1895
At Arles the original choir has disappeared and given place to a Middle Pointed one of somewhat insipid character, with low arches whose mouldings are carried down uninterruptedly to the bases of the columns, a three-sided apse, clerestoried like the choir, and with a procession path and radiating chapels.
Classical influences may be traced in the tastefully-treated ornamentation of the large and noble cloisters attached to this church, and in its western portal. In the latter, constructed towards the end of the twelfth century, the lines strive upwards. It is composed of a round-arched centre surmounted by a gable, and short quadrangular wings, the mass giving somewhat the idea of a stone triptych. In the wings are detached columns of the most graceful proportions crowned with Corinthianesque capitals. (The same type of column is employed in the marvellously beautiful triple portals of the church at Saint Gilles.) Some of these columns are fluted, and they support an architrave; their dimensions are well proportioned and their capitals show signs of a correct study of the antique. The bases represent lions and another animals, as was usual with the aesthetically untrained artists of the Middle Ages in the south of Europe.
The interior of the central arch of the portal and the architraves of the wings are perhaps somewhat overloaded with sculpture, which represents the Last Judgment. Sculptured in high relief, a calm, grand figure of our Lord, seated within a vesica, occupies the tympanum above the double doorway. The right hand is raised, while the left holds a book which rests upon the knee. Bold and spirited carvings of the Evangelistic symbols occupy the spaces formed by the vesica with the arch, the archivolts of which are enriched with two rows of ministering angels, culminating under the keystone in a figure of Saint Michael, from which the two balances have disappeared.
Within the architraves of the quadrangular wings, and continued along the sides and back of the porch, is a multitude of small, closely-set figures. Those immediately above the two square-headed doorways, and therefore beneath the feet of the 'Majesty', are seated and represent the Twelve Apostles, but these figures have no distinguishing symbols. They are flanked on either hand by another figure, also seated, that to the left, as the spectator faces the porch, being intended for Abraham receiving the elect into his lap. In the frieze corresponding to that over the doors we have, on the left-hand wing of the composition, the elect, headed by two bishops, the women following the men; while in that lining the interior of the porch is the usual representation of souls being weighed in a balance, those found wanting being carried off by a demon. In the frieze over the right-hand wing are seen the damned bound by a chain and walking amid flames, conducted by a demon, to the place of eternal punishment. The corresponding section of frieze within the porch is occupied by figures advancing towards those of the apostles, whereas those on the returned frieze are represented as retreating. Between the columns supporting these friezes, and within the porch on either side, are full-length figures of the evangelists and saints of the early Church; one of the latter, vested as a bishop, being probably intended for Saint-Trophime himself. These effigies stand within oblong panels, framed and crowned with delicate arabesques and minutely-sculptured groups, the latter composing a frieze subsidiary to that upper one whose closely-set figures impart a curiously Assyrian character to the work viewed en masse. In fact, that distinguished architect, Viollet-le-Duc, pronounces this porch at Arles 'd'une charactère Romano-grecque-syriaque' as regards its architecture, and the sculpture 'Gallo-romaine avec une influence Byzantine prononcée'.
In general treatment the sculpture may be said to take up ground intermediate between the conventional, elongated and emaciated Byzantine ones of half a century earlier (as exemplified in the western portals of Chartres and Angers, the lateral ones at Bourges, and in much of the plastic art of Poitou and Aquitaine) and the matured work seen at Amiens, Paris and Reims. Grouping, symmetry and life-like proportions were beginning to be cultivated in these figures at Arles, their distinguishing features being a greater variety, airiness and geniality. They are shorter and much better proportioned, and more correct in their anatomical details; while in the 'Majesty' of the tympanum the flat niello treatment has given way to an alto-relievo of greater power and excellence.
In the Provençal style the more decorated parts are separated or framed in by suitable and strong architectural lines. In Aquitaine, on the contrary, the whole façade is generally crowded with mystic figures. By means of arcades these form horizontal lines in niches or medallions and surround the protruding porches, window-frames and archivolts. The human figures have to accommodate themselves to the narrow spaces in which they are thrust, as may be seen in the façade of Notre-Dame la Grande at Poitiers.
Photos by Craig Wyzik on Flickr
