26
Sculptural Programs
The most impressive and elaborate works in the history of fine arts undoubtedly include the imposing sculptural programs that are found on the façades of Gothic cathedrals.1 Some of these can be found in England, e.g., on the façade of Wells, and some in Germany. The most imposing examples are, however, to be found in Northern France.2 The portals of Amiens Cathedral have more than 40 larger-than-life-size jamb figures that are accompanied by numerous smaller sculptures in the tympana, archivolts, and the base level floor. Similar designs can be seen in the transepts of the cathedrals of Chartres and Paris. This development reached its climax in Reims Cathedral, where the sculptural program extends over all stories of the façade and even to the interior of the western façade. Because of their continuing presence in the centers of so many medieval towns, these programs retained their fame and their modern study began in the nineteenth century.
The term “sculptural programs” implies that these series of figures are interrelated and based on a unifying concept, that they are not just an arbitrary collection of figures. It assumes that the sculptors, who often remained anonymous in the High Middle Ages, were not alone in being responsible for the planning but that others who were not artists but members of the clergy participated as well. These latter commissioned the construction of the cathedrals with their figural representations and bore the institutional responsibility for them.
Although modern art historians have often interpreted these sculptural programs in a rather political way, which will be demonstrated later in this chapter, almost all of the programs have a theological basis. One should be aware that the methodological approach taken by art historians to disclose the concepts behind these figural series is characterized by fundamental difficulties. On the one hand, there are only very few medieval texts about the contents of such “programs.” On the other, sources provide only very rare and vague information about the authors of the figural programs. The question arises which of the theological texts that were written in great numbers in the Middle Ages can be reasonably attributed to the sculptural series from a historical point of view. It is often problematic to take only one medieval text as the conceptual basis of a sculptural series. Although portal programs were “read” in the Middle Ages, this involved quite a different concept of reading than that of a continuous text. Apart from some narrative reliefs, portal programs are not read from left to right; a more complex type of reception is involved. The compositional structure of a sculptural portal program may offer the “reader” several approaches in various directions. There are horizontal, vertical, and even centripetal reading directions because the most prominent representation, e.g., a Majestas Domini (Christ in Majesty) or the coronation of Mary, is arranged in the central tympanum of the portal.3 Virtually all other elements of the image in the framing and lintel of doors or in the archivolts are oriented towards this central representation.
The Beginning of the Iconographic Research of Sculptural Programs
The earliest iconographic research of medieval cathedral sculptures is closely connected with the name of Emile Mâle. The great French scholar published his main work about Gothic cathedral cycles at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century.4 It was Mâle’s credo that art in the Middle Ages was regarded as a method of teaching. The world of religious images was a Biblia Pauperum, a Bible of poor men, for him. He thought that the uneducated laity visually learned everything from the images and associated this with their religious belief.
Everything that was of interest to humanity was taught to them by the glass paintings and the portal statues in the churches: the history of the world since its creation, religious doctrines, the exemplary deeds of the saints, the hierarchy of virtues, the manifoldness of the sciences, the arts and the handicrafts.
The basic intention of Mâle’s book was to show that all medieval teachings had been plastically represented in many ways in the cathedrals. Since Mâle regarded the sculptural ensembles of the cathedrals as an “encyclopedia of knowledge,” he organized and presented the huge iconographic material of the cathedral façades in accordance with the structural pattern of the most extensive encyclopedia of the Middle Ages – the Speculum Maius (Great Mirror) written by the Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais. Because Mâle was convinced that the plan of this mirror reflected the divine plan, he used the same four subdivisions of Vincent’s work for the four main parts of his study about the iconography of cathedrals. Thus he dealt with images of flora and fauna under the heading the “Mirror of Nature,” explaining the symbolic meaning of individual animal and plant species. He discusses representations of seasonal labor and the seven liberal arts in the chapter “Mirror of Science.” The section about the “Mirror of Morals” is dedicated to the virtues and vices. The major part of his study is dedicated to the “Mirror of History,” which combines scenes of the Old and New Testaments, the apocrypha, legends of the saints, and events of salvation history as well as the Last Judgment.
Although Mâle was a pioneer in the iconographic research of the cathedrals, he could build on essential preliminary work, for there had already been a very strong interest in medieval art in the early nineteenth century. In the 1830s, for example, important restoration work was beginning to be undertaken in the restoration of many of the cathedrals that were slowly falling into decay, with sculptures that had often been severely damaged during various civil disorders.
Often, romantic writers spearheaded these initiatives. One of the most prominent was Victor Hugo, who directed attention in his novel Notre-Dame de Paris to the portals of the cathedral of the French capital and demanded its restoration, which was started in 1843. Restoration of the sculptural programs made it necessary to get an idea of the original appearance of the sculptures and their figural programs. As this was not easy, the results varied greatly. A comparatively successful approach to the medieval condition was probably the restoration of the Notre-Dame portals in Paris by Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Violletle-Duc. They attempted to produce a reconstruction that was as authentic as possible. However, the result was greatly influenced by the Gothicism of their time. On the other hand, Lassus consulted historic descriptions of the old Paris, e.g., those written by Abbé Lebeuf and Guillot de Montjoie, to form a notion of the original appearance of medieval figural programs, thus demonstrating historic intuition and understanding.5
The enthusiasm for the Middle Ages in these years also resulted in the publication of numerous new journals that mainly dealt with the research of medieval cultural monuments and critically watched over their restoration. These are, above all, the Annales archéologiques published by Didron, the Bulletin monumental, the publications of the congrès archéologiques de France and the Revue de l’art chrétien. Many medieval sculptural programs were examined and described in these publications for the first time, although the iconographic analyses of the stone ensembles were often very limited. They were mostly restricted to discovering the meaning of the symbolic contents of individual motifs. At the same time, a large number of studies were made that were an attempt to explain Christian art as a whole, in particular Christian art of the Middle Ages. Among the most significant publications were Didron’s Iconographie chrétienne from 1845 and X. Barbier de Montault’s Traité d’iconographie chrétienne in 1870. These publications formed the basis on which Mâle could build his studies. One of the authors – Adolphe-Napoléon Didron (1806–67) – had played a particularly important role. Mâle used the structure of studies that Didron introduced and which included the headlines of nature, science, morals, and history that were in accordance with the structure of the Speculum maius by Vincent of Beauvais. He knew that Didron had already interpreted the sculptural cycles of the cathedrals as an encyclopedia of knowledge. However, Mâle did not agree with Didron in attributing an absolute value to the order of the Speculum maius. Mâle used the structure of the Speculum maius to discover the deeper meaning of the iconography of the thirteenth century by attempting to decipher and explain their logical order. Generally, and above all from the present point of view, he demonstrated much more of a historic-scientific approach than Didron had done. It is amazing how he associated theological texts written in the Middle Ages with the iconography of the cathedrals, in the process demonstrating his own superb scholarship. Even today, a hundred years after its first edition, L’Art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France is an essential encyclopedia for all those who deal with the iconography of the Middle Ages.
However, the time and conditions in which the great French scholar carried out his studies must not be neglected. Emile Mâle had also been influenced by the efforts at Catholic renewal at the end of the nineteenth century. The fact that his studies were not completely free of apologetic interests already becomes obvious in the methodological preliminary remarks of his work. Concerning the relation between religious art and theological literature, he said:
Literary amour-propre – the pride of authorship was unknown to the early Middle Ages. It was plain that a doctrine belonged not to him who expounded it but to the Church as a whole…. It follows that the apparently immense library of the Middle Ages consists after all of a very few works. Ten well chosen books might almost literally be said to take the place of all others. The commentators on the Old and New Testaments are summarised in the Glossa ordinaria of Walafrid Strabo…. The whole of the symbolic liturgy is in the Rationale divinorum officiorum of Gulielmus Durandus. The spirit and method of the old preachers live again in the Speculum Ecclesiae of Honorius of Autun. Sacred history, as then understood, is found in the Historia Scolastica of Peter Comestor and in the Legenda aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, profane history in the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais. All that was known of the physical world is summarised in the Speculum naturale, and all that was known of the moral world in the Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas, epitomised in the Speculum morale. A reader familiar with these works will have penetrated the depths of the mediaeval mind.6
It seems Mâle intended to neglect the developments and different views in theological thinking. He perceived medieval art as a perfect world, which had been free of the vanities of modernism, in which the word of God was still purely revealed in writing and images. On the other hand, modern medievalists know very well that the theologians of the Middle Ages had their own culture of dispute, including controversies and discussions.7 Even the role of images was the subject of discussion.8 Moreover, it is a well-known fact that the thirteenth century in particular was characterized by dramatic developments concerning central questions of theology and philosophy. Unfortunately, it seems that these methodical findings are not always incorporated into scholarly investigations of art. Even today, art historians often choose any medieval or patristic text as the basis to explain a given program, although the text is related to the program only in regard to its content, without any demonstrable historical relationship. They justify their approach by stating or suggesting that the work in question surely existed in the relevant library of the monastery or chapter at the time the cycle was made. As a result, the explanation of the monumental image cycles of the Middle Ages has often been based on the same authors over and over again, such as Rupert of Deutz, Honorius of Autun or Hugh of St Victor. In this regard, it would be quite beneficial for modern iconographic research to develop a more detached and critical view of Mâle’s heritage.
In relation to the main subject of this chapter, there is another reason to ask about the actual benefit of Mâle’s study, and this is, in essence, that he rarely examined the sculptural programs as independent conceptual systems. It was not the individual ensemble of statues that formed an encyclopedia of knowledge for him, but cathedral art as a whole. Mâle seldom studied the relations within one single sculptural program to discover its specific overall meaning. In his book on the art of the thirteenth century, his primary method was to isolate a single iconographic motif from its total context and compare it with similar motifs of other cycles. If, for example, he compares the relief-cycle of the virtues and vices in the Last Judgment portal at Chartres with those of Paris, Amiens, Sens, and Laon, the “Mirror of Morals” is finally formed. The substantial relation of these images of virtues and vices to the other elements of the Chartres Last Judgment program – as well as a possible interpretation of the sculptural program as a whole – is of only minor importance for Mâle in his study.
However, there were also scholars at that time who had an interest in the specific overall message of a portal program. In 1847, Auguste-Joseph Crosnier (1804–80), for example, presented his interpretation of the iconography of the sculptural cycles of Vézelay at the Société française d’archéologie, which was published one year later in the Congrès archéologiques de France. In the tympanum of the main entrance, Crosnier discovered the Mission of the Apostles as the central theological motif. He found that there is a strong relationship in medieval portal sculptures between the tympanum motif and the secondary representations that embellish its architectural frame, something that was the case for Vézelay. Crosnier believed he discerned the establishment of the Church as the principal theme of the sculptural decoration in all parts of the doorway.9
German art historians of the nineteenth century also showed an early interest in the interpretation of medieval sculptural programs, e.g., Karl Schnaase in his extensive Geschichte der bildenden Künste that was first published in the years 1843–64 (second edition 1866–75). Schnaase’s work was not only the first history of art that comprised all epochs, it also became the standard survey of art history in Germany in the nineteenth century.10
Although Schnaase devotes only a small part of his work to medieval sculptural programs, he studied the aesthetic significance and structure of portal programs far more completely than anyone before him. In his book, he mentions the Gothic portal cycles of Fribourg (Breisgau), Strasbourg, Amiens, and Chartres, dedicating much of his attention to the main entrance of Fribourg Cathedral.11 This is quite important with regard to his conclusions and his terminology of sculptural cycles, because this sculptural program in south-west Germany is quite different from its High Gothic French equivalents. This is particularly true for the architectural framework. The main portal of Fribourg Cathedral does not open out from the façade, properly speaking. Instead, the main portal, complete with tympanum and stepped figural jambs, is deeply recessed in a porch tower that dominates the west end (fig. 26-1). The sculptural program of the portal proper continues along the side walls of the porch entrance, while the main wall into which the portal proper is set functions as their background. In other words, the very physical environment in which the viewer perceives the sculptural program differs fundamentally from that of most French portal systems. The observer no longer stands in front of a sculptural ensemble. He finds himself within a three-dimensional ensemble of images that directs his eyes not only forward and upward but also sideways and to the back. Thus it is not incidental that Schnaase mentions the term “spatial symbolism” when talking about the significance of portal cycles. Moreover, he does not use the term “portal program,” but “composition” to describe the programmatic, mental, artistic, and architectural whole of the sculptural program. It must be admitted that with the Fribourg porch cycle, which was completed by the end of the thirteenth century, Schnaase dealt with one of the most complicated iconographic sculptural systems of the High Middle Ages. The walls of the porch are decorated with statues of the Seven Liberal Arts, female saints, Old Testament figures, the Wise and Foolish Virgins, and the strange figure of the Prince of This World whose front shows a seductive youth while his back is covered with toads and snakes. Exceptionally, the tympanum combines scenes of Christ’s childhood, Passion, and the Last Judgment (fig. 26-2). The center of the tympanum shows a representation of the crucifixion as the main motif. However, it does not appear within a narrative context of the Passion, but is the central component of a Last Judgment scene, acting to separate the chosen and damned that flank either side.
Schnaase found a reasonable explanation for this unusual composition:
To sum it up, the relief contains the history of salvation and judgment, earth and heaven, in such a way that the course of worldly events – although part of the past from the human perspective – fuses with the outcome of the separation of the righteous and the wicked on the last day as the cause of judgment.
Schnaase thus believes he sees the causal connections of the events of the history of salvation in the portal of Fribourg Cathedral, and in this regard declares that the “laws of composition” are symbolic – probably wishing to express that there is no need to search for a narrative logic in this composition. According to Schnaase, the figures are in a close internal relation in this “spatial symbolism.”
FIGURE 26-1 Porch entrance, Fribourg Cathedral.
FIGURE 26-2 Tympanum, west portal, Fribourg Cathedral.
In these sculptural cycles, which should be thought of in a “truly artistic sense,” Schnaase sees a “great, unique beauty” that is not based on the rational element alone, but on the interpenetration of plastic and architectural elements as well. Only a refined “sense of architecture” makes it possible to express the inner relation between the individual figures, says Schnaase. He regarded these figural cycles as a “tool to express the deepest thought with a sculptural clarity” that exceeds even the written word.
Schnaase’s aesthetic considerations of the sculptural cycles include very interesting aspects regarding the design and construction phases. This involves a closer consideration of the cooperation between the artists and the authors of the programs. Schnaase was convinced that the artists could not be the “authors” of these comprehensive and profound “compositions”; they lacked the necessary scholastic and theological background. Therefore, scholarly clergymen undoubtedly gave orders for the leading motifs. But, Schnaase underlines, as the “plan” was further advanced, the artists’ judgment became necessary again, so that, in the end, the whole piece could only be realized on the basis of the “mutual understanding of both parties.”
It is fascinating to observe the various aesthetic positions of the early nineteenth century that are involved in Schnaase’s aesthetic considerations on sculptural programs. On the one hand, one can detect traces of a romantic artistic concept in the adoration of the deep sensation that “these simple masters” (i.e., the sculptors) convey, transforming the dry symbolic relations between the various components into a wealth of liveliness and grace. On the other, basic elements of Hegelian aesthetics emerge in the idea that the beauty of these “compositions” results from the interplay of spirit and sensation, and that “the deepest thought” is expressed with “sculptural clarity,” something that had been impossible in other arts. What is new is Schnaase’s conclusion that this interplay was brought about by harmonious cooperation between theologians and sculptors. Finally, he even infers that “medieval art reached its climax in these compositions” in that it succeeded in “vividly presenting the great thoughts dominating the Church, the state, and science to the soul without the usual heavy scholastic formulae.”
Later, German art historians only rarely achieved the complexity of Schnaase’s interpretation of medieval sculptural programs. One of the reasons is the fact that the scholars researching the iconography of churches were closely associated with the clergy. Their primary task was to decipher the symbolic theological contents of the individual images. In other words, they searched for textual sources that helped interpret the persons and events depicted. They attempted to establish a history of iconographic types that offered a basis for the more or less clear classification of the representations.
In the early twentieth century, art historians in the circle of Aby Warburg began to expand considerably the expectations made in the basic analysis of works of art, and to regard works of art as social and cultural phenomena. These new aspects culminated in the three-stage interpretative model developed by Erwin Panofsky, who introduced ideological, general religious, and political beliefs into the analysis of the meaning of artworks. Nearly all of these innovative, and mostly Jewish, scholars, to whom modern iconographic research owes so much, left Germany because of the anti-Semitic regime, with most of them going to England or America. Among them was Adolf Katzenellenbogen, a pupil of Erwin Panofsky, who gave decisive impulses to the new interpretation of sculptural cycles.
Katzenellenbogen’s research allows us to take a closer look at one of the most prominent Gothic sculptural programs – Chartres Cathedral. It has two parts. The first is the sculptural embellishment of the royal entrance with its three portals, which was built in the middle of the twelfth century and reintegrated into the west façade of the new structure which became necessary after the fire in 1194. The second consists of the sculptures of the transept façades which extend over six portals of the new structure. The tympanum of the central portal on the older west façade shows Christ in Majesty accompanied by the symbols of the four evangelists and surrounded by the twenty-four elders in the archivolts. The two lateral portals are dedicated to the Incarnation and the Ascension of Christ. The central part of the north transept, which was built at least five decades later, is decorated by a portal showing the coronation of the Virgin Mary. This portal is flanked by two entrances, the left of which shows images of Christ’s childhood while the right depicts scenes from the Old Testament. Episodes from the lives of Job and Solomon decorate the tympanum of the right portal. In the central portal of the south transept, opposite the Coronation of the Virgin in the north transept, we find a depiction of the Last Judgment. The lateral portals here are dedicated to the martyrs and confessors of the Church.12
The questions that Katzenellenbogen raises concerning the sculptural program go far beyond the questions that Emile Mâle, for example, asked:
It is the purpose of this study to investigate a number of basic questions not yet, or not yet fully, answered. They concern above all the main ideas governing the iconography of the various programs, their connection with specific historical and ideological situations, and the relation of cycles carved at different times. To state these questions briefly: What is the skeletal frame, so to speak, which sustains and gives structure to the multiple parts of the programs? What are its literary sources? Could the liturgy have contributed its share? To what extent are certain facets of church history, current theological, philosophical, and political concepts reflected in the choice of subject matter?13
Adolph Katzenellenbogen believes that the west portals represent the basic doctrines of religious belief: Incarnation, Ascension, and the Second Coming of Christ. One of the major difficulties that iconographic research of the sculpture of Chartres Cathedral has repeatedly faced is the identification of the famous jamb figures of the royal portal. In the first half of the eighteenth century, Bernard de Montfaucon recognized them as the French kings and queens of the Merovingian dynasty. Emile Mâle, however, identified the figures as the royal ancestors of Christ. An influential fact was that the figures are accompanied by Moses, who is the only figure that could be identified beyond doubt by its attribute, the stone tablets, and who could therefore be related to the Old Testament. Katzenellenbogen interprets these jamb figures both as Christ’s ancestors and the spiritual forefathers of the French kings. So the Old Testament statues of the royal portal, prophets, kings, and queens, represent the harmony between regnum and sacerdotium. This harmony, which most closely guarantees the welfare of the Church, is for Katzenellenbogen one of the threads linking the three cycles of the façade and the transept wings. He generally considers the three façade programs as a unit, joined together by the representation and the meaning of the main persons. The three cycles “depict, like a Summa, the total essence of Christ in all its conceptual ramifications…. The Virgin Mary, the Lady of Chartres, was honored in the lateral tympanum of the Royal Portal as Theotokos and Sedes Sapientiae. She received a prominent place on the transept wings. In the scene of her Triumph she is glorified in her own right and as the type of the Church.” This Church is “shown as the Bride of Christ and as His Body. She is shown triumphant and militant. She is exemplified by her foremost members, the Community of Saints.”14 Katzenellenbogen shows that the planners of the sculptural programs drew inspiration from different sources: from the Bible, from legends, from the liturgy, from the dogmas of the Church, from theological exegesis, and not least from political and philosophical concepts. He underlines the importance of the great teachers of the school of Chartres and sees their ideas alive in the sculptural decoration. So he realizes an “indissoluble link between a great center of learning and a great center of art.”15
Not all researchers who studied the sculptures of Chartres after Katzenellenbogen believe that the royal portal was supposed to be reintegrated into the new part after the fire of 1194. Van der Meulen and Hohmeyer propose that the Last Judgment of the south transept portal was originally carved for the central west portal. Only when plans were changed were the already complete sculptures removed to their current position.16 Almost all researchers assume that plans had been changed several times during the conception phase of the transept portals. And so did Katzenellenbogen, even though he finally interprets the result as a very harmonious ensemble whose parts display strong associations to each other. The most recent large-scale study of the iconography of the Chartres transept sculptures, published by Martin Büchsel in 1995, suggests a very complex history of its planning and making. Even though Büchsel cannot detect any conceptual associations between the transept façades and the royal portal, he – like Katzenellenbogen – starts from the fact that the latter was from the very beginning to be retained in the west façade after the fire in 1194. He believes that the initial planning focused on the reconstruction of the south transept façade with its three portals with sculptural decoration, and which faced the town, as the new main entrance of the cathedral. At that time, it was planned that its central portal was to be decorated with a coronation scene of the Virgin Mary that would be flanked by a Last Judgment together with an Epiphany. This disposition was modeled on the example of Laon, from where the sculptors would have been sent to Chartres. Only after the plans had been changed several times was the arrangement as we know it today decided upon. The Last Judgment was placed in the middle of the south transept, and the newly planned part on the north transept would house the coronation of the Virgin Mary and the Epiphany portal. To complete the six entrances, the confessors’ portal and the martyrs’ portal on the south and the Job and Solomon portal on the north (which exclusively consists of figures of the Old Testament) would be added. The tympanum of the latter shows the derision of Job and the lintel displays the judgment of Solomon. While Katzenellenbogen had already recognized the typological reference in this portal, which – in his opinion – points to the Epiphany portal and the coronation of the Virgin Mary portal, Büchsel goes one step further. For him, this portal is the hinge on which all parts of the now built sculptural program of the transept are based. It “comments” on the other portals of the transept and is a “universal program” that refers to every aspect that is expressed in the remaining portals. In the Christ types of Solomon, Job, Gideon, etc., it comments also typologically the main components of the Last Judgment: judge, passion, victor, and intercession. The prefigurations of the Church – i.e., the Queen of Sheba, Esther, Judith, Sarah, and Tobit’s wife – correspond with the exegetical types of Christ.17 The Church recognizes Solomon, i.e., Christ, as the true king enthroned by God. Moreover, Büchsel found that the typological references of the Job and Solomon portal could equally be detailed historical references. In this connection, he builds on the theses of Katzenellenbogen and Levis-Godechots. The latter proposed that Job’s friends could be interpreted as the Albigenses who represented a very real danger for the Church at that time.18 The fact that Gideon is shown in a suit of armor gives rise to Büchsel’s idea that this may be associated with crusaders and crusades. From the fact that the type of the Antichrist, Holofernes, is presented with an antique emperor’s head, Büchsel inferred an allusion to the Roman emperor who had often been accused of not being the representative of God but of being the Antichrist in the investiture controversy.19
However the question remains open whether a uniform sculptural program can still be assumed after the numerous changes of plans that are supported by archeological observations. Brigitte and Peter Kurmann have a very pragmatic view in this respect. They believe that the programs had been conceived and designed accordingly before the final assembly. But, they believe, it is possible that these sculptures were rearranged and combined differently afterwards, and even reworked where necessary – owing to structural and conceptual requirements.20
Comparison of the Romanesque and Gothic
What distinguishes the Gothic from the Romanesque sculptural cycles in France is their greater consistency.21 Two types of programs dominated the Gothic style. One of them is found in almost every façade of the cathedrals of the Îlede-France and its environment. On the one hand is the portal of the coronation of the Virgin Mary, which was first executed in Senlis in 1170, and on the other hand is the Last Judgment, whose quasi-canonical program was fully worked out in the Chartres transept and the west façade in Paris. Also, the system of architectural elements of the portal programs had been more or less regularized in the Gothic period, beginning with the early Gothic west portals of St Denis and Chartres. With only a few exceptions, sculptural decorations are now arranged in the archivolts, the tympanum, the lintel, the trumeau, the door frames, and the jambs where the sculptures were made as jamb figures.
The Romanesque sculptural cycles, however, have a different appearance. There is no consistent principle according to which the sculptures are arranged in the architectural layout of the buildings. Instead, you can find a wide range of architectural frames for the sculptural cycles. In the west of France, the images of the Announcement of the Last Judgment are often found in the archivolts only. At Conques and Autun, the programs spread over large-area tympana. At Moissac and Beaulieu, the porch walls are also decorated with reliefs. Arles follows its very own principle with its antique porticus, which provides space for a wide-ranging cycle. St Gilles has a similar layout. Consistent program types are much less typical for the Romanesque style than for the Gothic period. One can refer to simpler cycles in which only a few image elements are grouped around a Majestas Domini, or special regional forms such as the archivolt programs of the Aquitaine. Apparently, the so-called Last Judgment portals of Autun, Conques, and Beaulieu are also dedicated to a dominant main motif. However, even this reading is debated among scholars, as the example of Beaulieu shows. There are actually some particular features in this representation of the Last Judgment. These features allow Peter Klein, and with him Yves Christe, to assume that it is not the Last Judgment that is depicted in the tympanum of the portal but the Second Coming of Christ (which immediately precedes the Last Judgment), according to Matt. 24: 29–31: “and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” Only the resurrection of the dead (Rev. 20: 12–13) and the Twelve Apostles as the assessors of the Last Judgment (Matt. 19: 28) have a direct reference to the Last Judgment, which has not yet begun.22
Of course, it can be questioned whether it is reasonable to make a distinction between the Christ of the Second Coming and Christ the Judge in medieval portal programs that represent the Last Judgment. Or is it more useful to assume that Romanesque tympana have a much more synthetic character that points to several incidents in the salvation history? There are other examples of Romanesque portal programs, the main subject of which is not completely clear to iconographers. One of them is the middle portal of the porch of the Abbey Church of Vézelay. In its central part, the tympanum depicts Christ in a mandorla. Beams of light project from Christ’s hands to the heads of his disciples, who stand on either side of him. While Crosnier, as I have mentioned, wrote in 1847 that this represented the Mission of the Apostles, Emile Mâle identified it as a representation of Pentecost – to be more precise, as the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles.23 Mâle gave iconographic parallels, such as a miniature from Cluny that was made about the same time and a twelfth-century image in the apse of St Gilles at Montoire. Mâle, in turn, was contradicted by Fabre, who defended Crosnier’s interpretation of the Mission of the Apostles and stated that it is not possible that Christ was depicted in a pentecostal image.24 Adolf Katzenellenbogen recognized a combination of several themes in the tympanum. For him, it is a combination of the wonder of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit with Christ’s ascension and the Mission of the Apostles, while Joan Evans focused on “the redemption of the world through the blood of Christ.”25
The direction of the discussions about the contents of sculptural programs naturally depends on the specific questions researchers ask about them. During recent decades, for example, it has been very popular to inquire into patronage, the specific ritual and liturgical context, or the political functions of sculptural cycles.26 This approach may be considered the heritage of Panofsky and Katzenellenbogen. Concerning the political reading, the ensembles were first interpreted as the expression of Church politics, for example, the struggle between official Church and heretical groups already mentioned.27 Or the cycles are supposed to be specifically designed to serve as a summons to go on crusades. After Katzenellenbogen’s study, Christian Beutler saw this as the solution of the interpretation problem of Vézelay.28 In his opinion, the original tympanum initially showed the commemoration of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. During the years of the Second Crusade, he believes, a decision was made to change the tympanum and add the Christ on the Throne to motivate people for the crusade.29 Searching for the “hidden intentions” of the representations, researchers sometimes also presumed very detailed political ambitions of the clergy who formed the background of the program concepts. Michael D. Taylor attempted to analyze the political meaning of the main portal of Vézelay (which he interprets as a scene of Pentecost) as an effort to prevent the neighboring powers of the monastery, the Count of Nevers and the Bishop of Autun, from making reprisals on the monastery. According to this argument, the scene of Pentecost should be understood as representing the monastery itself: “[Pentecost] embodies the principle for the monastery’s existence and legitimates its struggle for independence from secular power…. The image thus defines the community, its spiritual basis, and, in the face of attacks, its rights and privileges.”30
Other methodological trends from the various disciplines of intellectual history have recently influenced the art historical study of medieval portal programs, including French structuralism. For example, in 1984 Jean-Claude Bonne analyzed the Romanesque portal of Conques with its representation of the Last Judgment, employing a strongly structuralist and semiotic approach.31 It was Bonne’s major concern that the formal structures in the great tympanum relief themselves should be recognized as statements or meaning; i.e., content and form must not be separated. He calls his approach analyse syntaxique, which refers to an analysis of the plastic and chromatic properties of the portal insofar as they are structures of meaning in themselves.32 Bonne attempted to establish specific analytic categories for this method. These categories all refer to the formal and compositional characteristics of the tympanum, used by Bonne for the portal of Conques for the first time. He describes one of these categories as compartmentalization (compartimentage), or that which circumscribes the division of the overall relief into single segments. The theme of the Last Judgment is, according to Bonne, a very good example of how compartimentage functions in the task of giving figures and things their correct places.
Other methodologies with origins in literary studies have also had an influence in the area of portal programs. Among them is reception theory, “whose focus is not the identity and significance built into the work of art, but the manner in which these characteristics are registered by the audience to which it is addressed.”33
In conclusion, it can be noticed, generally, that both the methodical approaches and the specific issues related to the study of medieval sculptural programs depend also upon the specific socialization of the individual researcher. This means that those studies were influenced to no insignificant degree by the trends of social sciences, the humanities, and philosophy of science at the time when they were written. Schnaase’s studies on the sculptural program of Fribourg are marked by late Romantic and Hegelian trends of around 1850 and Mâle’s iconographic methodical considerations reflect, as we have seen, to a certain extent the intentions of the French Renouveau Catholique of the late nineteenth century. German and French researches into medieval sculpture in the first decades of the twentieth century were often influenced by nationalistic trends. Furthermore, in the 1960s until the 1980s the question of the political intentions behind the sculptural programs can also be explained by the specific interests of that time. In more recent years even specific aspects of gender studies have been examined in connection with medieval portal programs.34
However, the difficulty mentioned earlier in this chapter continue to be felt. We do not know enough about the people behind these programs. Hardly any of the program authors can be identified reliably today. The role played by Abbot Suger of the Benedictine Abbey Church of St Denis is probably a very special case. For example, the iconographic program of the west portals of his abbey church are attributed to him.35 Laurence Brugger-Christe has proposed a remarkable thesis about the sculptural programs of the Cathedral of Bourges.36 This thesis can convincingly ascribe the sculptural program of the west façade to the works of a converted Jew (olim judeaus) Guillaume de Bourges, who was deacon of the cathedral during its construction. It would be desirable if such attempts to add further details to the specific historic environment of medieval sculptural programs were successful more frequently.
1 In the Middle Ages, sculptural cycles also decorated jubes, pulpits, cloisters, etc. For recent summaries of the state of research of the latter see Parker, The Cloisters, especially Forsyth, “Monumental Arts.” The present chapter, however, focuses on the figures adorning the façades of churches. [On Gothic sculpture in general, see chapter 19 by Büchsel in this volume (ed.).]
2 See Sauerländer, Gothic Sculpture.
3 Concerning the vertical reading direction, Katzenellenbogen, Sculptural Programs, p. 15, draws attention to the fact that the central axis in the Chartres tympana and archivolts has an “ideographic function.”
4 Mâle, L’Art réligieux du XIIIe siècle.
5 Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus, provides extensive information about Lassus and his Gothic image.
6 Mâle, The Gothic Image, p. xiv.
7 Flasch, Einführung, illustrates this topic very vividly.
8 For discussion about the role of images in the twelfth century, see Rudolph, Things of Greater Importance. [On Gregory the Great and image theory in Northern Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see chapter 7 by Kessler in this volume (ed.).]
9 Crosnier, “Iconographie.” See Nayrolles, “Deux approches,” pp. 214–17.
10 For Schnaase see Karge, “Das Frühwerk Karl Schnaases.”
11 For the following, see Schnaase, Geschichte der Bildenden Künste, pp. 290ff.
12 For the state of research of the sculptural programs of Chartres, see Kurmann and Kurmann-Schwarz, Chartres.
13 Katzenellenbogen, Sculptural Programs, p. 8.
14 Ibid., pp. 101, 102.
15 Ibid. [For more on the sculptural program of Chartres, see chapter 19 by Büchsel in this volume (ed.).]
16 Hohmeyer and van der Meulen, Chartres.
17 Büchsel, Skulpturen des Querhauses, p. 88ff. [On art and exegesis, see chapter 8 by Hughes in this volume (ed.).]
18 Levis-Godechot, Chartres révélée, p. 153.
19 Büchsel, Die Skulpturen des Querhauses, p. 89.
20 Kurmann and Kurmann-Schwarz, Chartres, pp. 266ff.
21 [On Romanesque sculpture, see chapters 15 and 16 by Hourihane and Maxwell, respectively, in this volume (ed.).]
22 Klein, “Eschatologische Portalprogramme”; Yves Christe, “Le Portail de Beaulieu.”
23 Mâle, L’Art réligieux du XIIe siècle, p. 326f.
24 Fabre, “L’Iconographie de la Pentecôte.”
25 Katzenellenbogen, “Central Tympanum at Vézelay”; Evans, Cluniac Art, pp. 70f.
26 For patronage, see, for example, Gaposchkin, “The King of France”; Gillerman, “The portal of St.-Thibault-en-Auxois”; Kurmann and Kurmann-Schwarz, “Das mittlere.” For the relevance of ritual and liturgical matters, see, for example, Nolan, “Ritual and Visual Experience”; Horste, Cloister Design; Seelye-McBee, Sculptural Program; Sauerländer, “Reliquien, Altäre und Portale”; Fassler, “Liturgy and Sacred History.” [On patronage, see chapter 9 by Caskey in this volume (ed.).]
27 See Lyman, “Heresy.”
28 Katzenellenbogen, “Central Tympanum at Vézelay.” For the state of research of the Vézelay Program, see Diemer, “Das Pfingstportal von Vézelay.”
29 Beutler, “Das Tympanon zu Vézelay.”
30 Taylor, “The Pentecost at Vézelay,” p. 13. See also Diemer, “Das Pfingstportal von Vézelay,” p. 94.
31 Bonne, L’Art roman.
32 Ibid., p. 18. [On formalism, see chapter 5 by Seidel in this volume (ed.).]
33 Cahn, “Romanesque Sculpture,” pp. 45, 46. For this approach, see also the other articles in Kahn, ed., The Romanesque Frieze, and Altmann, “The Medieval Marquee.” [On reception, see chapter 3 by Caviness in this volume (ed.).]
34 Smartt, “Cruising Twelfth-Century Pilgrims,” for example, studies the iconography of Romanesque sculpture at Moissac from a gay perspective.
35 See Gerson, “Sugar as Iconographer.”
36 Brugger, La Façade de Saint-Etienne de Bourges.
Charles F. Altmann, “The Medieval Marquee; Church Portal Sculpture as Publicity,” Journal-of-Popular-Culture XIV/1 (1980), pp. 37–46.
Xavier Barbier de Montault, Traité d’iconographie chrétienne (Paris, 1870).
Christian Beutler, “Das Tympanon zu Vézélay. Programm, Planwechsel und Datierung,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 29 (1967), pp. 7–30.
Bruno Boerner, Par caritas par meritum, Studien zur Theologie des gotischen Weltgerichtsportals in Frankreich – am Beispiel des mittleren Westeingangs von Notre-Dame in Paris (Fribourg, 1998).
Jean Claude Bonne, L’Art roman de face et de profil (le tympan de Conques) (Paris, 1985).
Laurence Brugger, La Façade de Saint-Etienne de Bourges: le Midrash comme fondement du message chrétien (Poitiers, 2000).
Martin Büchsel, Die Skulpturen des Querhauses der Kathedrale von Chartres (Berlin, 1995).
Walter Cahn, “Romanesque Sculpture and the Spectator,” in Deborah Kahn, ed., The Romanesque Frieze and its Spectator: The Lincoln Symposium Papers (1992), pp. 44–60.
Yves Christe, “Le Portail de Beaulieu. Étude iconographique et stylistique,” Bulletin archéologique du comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques 56 (1970), pp. 57–76.
Auguste-Joseph Crosnier, “Iconographie de l’église de Vézelay,” Congrès archéologiques de France 1847 (1848), Sens 14, pp. 219–30.
Adolphe Napoléon Didron, Iconographie chrétienne, histoire de Dieu (Paris 1843); Eng. trans.: Christian Iconography: The History of Christian Art in the Middle Ages (London, 1851–86).
Peter Diemer, “Das Pfingstportal von Vézelay. Wege, Umwege und Abwege einer Diskussion,” Jahrbuch des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte 1 (1985), pp. 77–114.
Joan Evans, Cluniac Art of the Romanesque Period (Cambridge, 1950)
Abel Fabre, “L’Iconographie de la Pentecôte. Le portail de Vézelay, les fresques de Saint-Gilles de Montoire et la miniature de «lectionnaire de Cluny»,” Gazette des Beaux Arts 65, (1994) pp. 33–42.
M. Fassler, “Liturgy and Sacred History in the Twelfth-Century Tympana at Chartres,” The Art Bulletin LXXV (1993), pp. 499–520.
Kurt Flasch, Einführung in die Philosophie des Mittelalters (Darmstadt, 1987).
Ilene Forsyth, “The Monumental Arts of the Romanesque Period: Recent Research,” in Elizabeth Parker, ed., The Cloisters: Studies in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary (New York, 1992), pp. 3–25.
Cecilia M. Gaposchkin, “The King of France and the Queen of Heaven: The Iconography of the Porte Rouge of Notre-Dame of Paris” Gesta 39:1 (2000), pp. 58–72.
Paula Lieber Gerson, “Sugar as Iconographer. The Central Portal of the West Façade of Saint-Denis,” Abbot Sugar and Saint-Denis. A Symposium (New York, 1986), pp. 183–98.
D. Gillerman, “The Portal of St.-Thibault-en-Auxois: A Problem of Thirteenth-Century Burgundian Patronage and Founder Imagery,” The Art Bulletin 68:4 (1986), pp. 567–80.
M. F. Hearn, Romanesque Sculpture: The Revival of Monumental Stone Sculpture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Ithaca, NY, 1981).
Jürgen Hohmeyer and J. van der Meulen, Chartres: Biographie einer Kathedrale (Köln, 1984).
Kathryn Horste, Cloister Design and Monastic Reform in Toulouse: The Romanesque Sculpture of La Daurade (Oxford, 1992).
Deborah Kahn, ed., The Romanesque Frieze and its Spectator: The Lincoln Symposium Papers (London, 1992).
Henrik Karge, “Das Frühwerk Karl Schnaases: zum Verhältnis von Ästhetik und Kunstgeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Antje Middeldorf-Kosegarten, ed., Johann Dominicus Fiorillo: Kunstgeschichte und die romantische Bewegung von 1800 (Göttingen, 1997), pp. 402–19.
Adolf Katzenellenbogen, “The Central Tympanum at Vézelay. Its Encyclopedic Meaning and Its Relation to the First Crusade,” The Art Bulletin 26 (1944), pp. 141–51.
——, “Iconographic Novelties and Transformations in the Sculpture of French Church Façades, ca.1160–1190,” Studies in Western Art (Princeton, 1963), vol. 1, pp. 108–18.
——, The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral (Baltimore, 1959).
Calvin B. Kendall, The Allegory of the Church: Romanesque Portals and Their Verse Inscriptions (Toronto, 1998).
Peter K. Klein, “Eschatologische Portalprogramme der Romanik und Gotik,” in Herbert Beck and Kerstin Hengevoss-Durkop, eds., Studien zur Geschichte der europäischen Skulptur im 12./13. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1994), pp. 397–411.
Peter Kurmann and Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz, Chartres, la cathedrale (Saint-Léger-Vauban, 2001).
——, “Das mittlere und südliche Westportal der Kathedrale von Meaux: Repräsentanten der Pariser Plastik aus dem zweiten Viertel des 14. Jahrhunderts und ihr politischer Hintergrund,” Zeitschrift für Schweizer Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 43/1 (1986), pp. 37–58.
Jean-Michel Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus (1807–1857) ou le temps retrouvé des cathédrales (Genève, 1980).
N. Levis-Godechot, Chartres révélée par sa sculpture et ses vitraux (Vineul-Saint-Firmin, 1987).
Thomas Lyman, “Heresy and the History of Monumental Sculpture in Romanesque Europe,” in Herbert Beck and Kerstin Hengevoss-Durkop, eds., Studien zur Geschichte der europäischen Skulptur im 12./13. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1994), pp. 45–56.
Emile Mâle, L’Art réligieux du XIIe siècle en France (Paris, 1922).
——, L’Art réligieux du XIIIe siècle en France: étude sur l’iconographie de moyen âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris, 1898); Eng. trans. by Dora Nussey, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France in the Thirteenth Century (New York, 1958).
Jean Nayrolles, “Deux approches de l’iconographie médiévale dans les années 1840,” Gazette des Beaux Arts 6:128 (1996), pp. 201–20.
Kathleen Nolan, “Ritual and Visual Experience in the Capital Frieze at Chartres,” Gazette des Beaux Arts 6:123 (1994), pp. 53–72.
Elizabeth Parker, ed., The Cloisters: Studies in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary (New York, 1992).
Conrad Rudolph, “The Things of Greater Importance”: Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art (Philadelphia, 1990).
Willibald Sauerländer, “Architecture and the Figurative Arts: The North,” in Cathedrals and Sculpture (1999), pp. 298–338.
——, Gothic Sculpture in France, 1140–1270 (New York, 1972).
——, “Reliquien, Altäre und Portale,” in Nicolas Bock, ed., Kunst und Liturgie im Mittelalter, Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 33 (Beiheft, 1999/2000), pp. 121–34
——, “Romanesque Sculpture in its Architectural Context,” in Deborah Kahn, ed., The Romanesque Frieze and its Spectator: The Lincoln Symposium Papers (London, 1992), pp. 16–43.
——, “Sculpture on Early Gothic Churches: The State of Research and Open Questions” Gesta 9 (1970), pp. 32–48.
Wilhelm Schlink, Der Beau-Dieu von Amiens. Das Christusbild der gotischen Kathedrale (Frankfurt, 1991).
Carl Schnaase, Geschichte der Bildenden Künste, vols. I–VII (Düsseldorf 1843–64).
Henrietta Seelye-McBee, The Sculptural Program of the Hemicycle Capitals in the Church of St.-Nectaire (North Carolina, 1979).
Linda Seidel, Songs of glory; The Romanesque Façades of Aquitaine (Chicago and London, 1981).
Daniel Smartt, “Cruising Twelfth-Century Pilgrims,” in Whitney Davis, ed., Gay And Lesbian Studies in Art History (New York, London, Norwood, Adelaide, Haworth, 1994), pp. 35–55.
Michael D. Taylor, “The Pentecost at Vézelay” Gesta 19 (1980), pp. 9–15.
M.-L. Therel, Le Triomphe de la vierge-église (Paris, 1984).
P. Williamson, Gothic Sculpture 1140–1300 (Yale, 1995).
Rita Wood, “The Romanesque Doorways of Yorkshire, with Special Reference to that at St. Mary’s Church, Riccall,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 66 (1994), pp. 59–90.