Medieval Cathedrals: Notre-Dame de Laon, part 2: Interior

[I'll be using a lot of architectural terms in this series of posts, and in the interests of not doing work that's already been done, instead of making my own glossary I'm linking to this excellent one by Athena Review. All photos used in this post are mine, and can be used by others provided you post a link to this page and credit me.]

My sources for this material are wikipedia’s Laon Cathedral page, The Great Courses The Cathedral course by Professor William Cook (lecture 9), and La Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Laon by Auguste Bouxin, available via Archive.org.  The book is where I got the information for the sculptural program.  Note that my French isn’t that great and the book is quite old (1902), so if you plan to use that information you’d be advised to check with more modern sources.

See part 1: the exterior, here.

-----------------------------------
Laon cathedral is 111 meters long, the nave being 53 meters, and the choir an impressive 10 bays.  The transepts that give the church its cruciform shape are 12 meters long and meet at a crossing tower that is 40 meters high. 

Nave looking west from the crossing.

Nave looking east

I've included a jpeg version of the floor plan I prepared (and corrected) for this cathedral.  Fell free to use it, but please credit me if you do.  Email me if you'd like the pdf file instead.

Crossing tower with tripartite elevation

Laon Cathedral floor plan

The cathedral has a 4 part elevation: aisle, gallery, triforium and clearstory.  The columns alternate styles, with either 3 or 5 colonettes rising from the floor to join with the vaulting in the ceiling. 

Nave elevation

Nave pillar with aisle and nave vaulting.

You can sometimes arrange to see the gallery at the tourist information office next door.  Unfortunately I didn’t have time for the tour, though I imagine you can get some amazing photographs from there.  It’s also the only way to see the two lancet windows visible on the west front, as the aisle otherwise blocks them from view at nave level.  It’s also the only way to see the upper chapels that adorn the rounded sides of the transepts.  The upper chapels have a double elevation, making a three window height visible from the outside of the cathedral.

The north rose window contains stained glass from the 1180s and depicts Philosophy, with the ladder on her dress as described by Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy. surrounded by the other arts.  The four slightly off set lancet windows below have modern glass in them.

The south window has a large lancet window with an occulus and smaller lancets inside it, now filled with clear glass.  The tracery is 14th century and quite beautiful.

South transept

South transept lower chapel

The east end is quite impressive with three very deeply set tall lancet windows surmounted by a rose.  There’s some original 13th century stained glass here.

East end

Deep set lancet windows in east end

The centre, ‘Passion window’ includes a scene in the lower right quadrant of the upper roundel that depicts the pilgrims of Emmaus eating at a table, with Christ’s feet rising through the ceiling (alas, the glass is dark so I couldn’t locate the scene when I was there, and my attempts to crop large photos down to show it aren’t as successful as I’d have liked).

Supper at Emmaus stained glass

Unfortunately the west rose, made in 1210 and depicting the Last Judgement, is partially obscured by the organ.

West rose window

While a bit out of the way - and a tough climb up a steep hill - Laon Cathedral is definitely worth a visit.

Taking the stairs back down to the train station is MUCH easier.

Medieval Cathedrals: Notre-Dame de Laon, part 1: Exterior

[I'll be using a lot of architectural terms in this series of posts, and in the interests of not doing work that's already been done, instead of making my own glossary I'm linking to this excellent one by Athena Review. All photos used in this post are mine, and can be used by others provided you post a link to this page and credit me.]

My sources for this material are wikipedia’s Laon Cathedral page, The Great Courses The Cathedral course by Professor William Cook (lecture 9), and La Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Laon by Auguste Bouxin, available via Archive.org.  The book is where I got the information for the sculptural program.  Note that my French isn’t that great and the book is quite old (1902), so if you plan to use that information you’d be advised to check with more modern sources.  I did make some corrections to my chart based on the photographs I made of the cathedral, but it’s possible some of the figures have been more accurately identified.  I don’t own a guide book for this cathedral the way I do for several others, so take my charts as a jumping off point for study rather than as a finished product.

See part 2: Interior, here.

—————————————

Notre-Dame de Laon is situated on top of a steep hill.  It makes for an impressive view, from the bottom and the top.  Laon was an important city for Charlemagne and his descendants.  The emperor attended the dedication of a previous church on the site, completed in 800 CE.  That church was replaced under Bishop Elinand (1052-1095).  It suffered fire damage in the revolt of 1112, but wasn’t completely destroyed. 

The current cathedral was started in the choir around 1160.  Construction stopped in 1174 and restarted around 1180, with the nave.  The choir was replaced and lengthened in 1215, replacing the apse (curved end) with a square one.  This gives the cathedral a wonderful sense of length, though none of the other Gothic cathedrals used it.  The West front, begun in the 1190s, was completed with three portals and a rose window around 1225.  This was the first deep set rose window created after that of Saint Denis.  It depicts the Last Judgement and dates from 1210.  Unfortunately the organ covers the lower parts of the glass, so they’re impossible to see (maybe you can see it on the gallery tour?).

Laon from the train.

First set of stairs up the hill.

The west facade is gorgeous, though all of the jamb statues are reproductions, as is the central lintel with the scenes of the Domition and Assumption of Mary.  Mary sits above these scenes on a throne next to her son, both of them flanked by angels with prophets, angels and the tree of Jesse in the archivolts above. 

West Facade

Central portal

The left portal is heavily influenced by the fact that Laon was an important center of learning for the time.  While the lintel and tympanum show the birth of Christ and Mary as Throne, the archivolts show scenes from the Bible that testify of Christ as well as the virtues and vices.

Left portal

Right portal

On the right portal we find the Last Judgement scene that is quite tame in comparison to that of many other churches and cathedrals of this period.  The bodies rising from the graves are peaceably led off to heaven or hell without any fuss and no real terrifying figures.  Christ sits in majesty above, with choirs of angels and the elect (or saints?) in the archivolts.  The outermost arch holds on the left side, the wise virgins with their vials of oil, and on the right, the foolish.  At the very top of that arch on the left we can see the church with the open door, and on the right, the doors are closed.

Left lancet archivolts with arts.

Right lancet archivolts with creation.

Above the outer doors are two large lancet windows with carved archivolts as well.  The left one shows fantastical beasts in two of the arches, with a third showing female representations of the arts (the trivium: grammar, logic and rhetoric, the quadrivium: arithemetic, geometry, music and astronomy.  The artist also threw in - according to Bouxin - philosophy, medicine and painting).  On the right we find some birds eating grapes, eagles spreading their wings and God creating the world.

The west facade has a lot of minor sculpture accenting the architectural features.  Easily spotted are a winged hippopotamus and rhinoceros, but there are a lot of faces and other fantastical creatures. There are arches but no gallery of kings on the upper level.  A statue of Mary holding Jesus, flanked by two angels, appears at the top in the centre of the facade.

Here's the sculptural program chart I made for my trip (and updated after my trip), that identifies all of the figures.  It's a jpeg of a pdf, so it won't print out in great condition.  If you'd like a better copy, email me and I'll send you the pdf.  If you choose to use this on your own site or for a school paper, please credit me and read the notes above regarding my sources.

Laon west facade sculptural program

west facade sculpture

The building was supposed to have 7 towers, but only 5 were built.  The towers have two sets of porticoes on top of each other at the corners, the lower one is square while the upper one is hexagonal.  Several stone oxen look out of the towers, tribute to the oxen that supposedly appeared to help pull the building stones up the hill to the building site and then disappeared when the work was completed.

tower

tower detail with oxen

The north side of the church has a door with minor sculpture, now broken.  The figures look like a martyrdom scene, with the martyr being escorted to heaven in the upper level.

North door

North side

The south side has some figure sculpture but little else.

The east end is only really visible from the old Bishop’s palace to the south west, but shows the rounded chapels on the transepts and the square east end.

East side

Tomorrow I'll post the floor plan and pictures of the interior.

Medieval Cathedrals: Basilica-Cathedral of Saint Denis

[I'll be using a lot of architectural terms in this series of posts, and in the interests of not doing work that's already been done, instead of making my own glossary I'm linking to this excellent one by Athena Review.  With one noted exception, all photos used in this post are mine, and can be used by others provided you post a link to this page and credit me.]







Built on what was believed to be the resting place of Saint Denis (whom I'm planning a post for for next Friday), this basilica (which only became a cathedral in 1966) was the centre of worship for a benedictine abbey.  It was patroned by kings, and served as their mausoleum.  It was also used to house their war standard, the Oriflamme.  Before they went to war the kings would go to the abbey for a blessing and to retrieve their flag.

A copy of the Oriflamme is seen in the same area
as effigies for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Bourbon tombs in the crypt.

In the 12th century Abbot Suger, having read the works of Pseudo-Dionysius about the esthetics and symbolism of light as a way of seeking God and Heaven, wanted to allow more light into the church. The building style that came out of his ideas - vaulted roofs that put pressure on buttresses rather than the whole wall and allowed holes to be cut into the sides of the building to put in windows, the tripartate structure of the inside (of aisle arcade, gallery or triforium (in a few cases both), and clerestory) as well as the tripartite structure of the new west facade (with three portals for entering the church), became widespread and led to what we now call Gothic architecture.

Suger wrote two works that have come down to us, one on how he raised money for the rebuilding and one on some of the commissioned works that adorned it, including some stained glass scenes - featuring him - that have survived.  (The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a book you can download for free on his works.)  He was also the first to commission a stained glass window depicting the Tree of Jesse (some panels of which still exist).

Abbot Suger presenting the Tree of Jesse window to the right of the reclining King Jesse.

Abbot Suger at the feet of Mary in the Annunciation panel.

Rather unusually, Suger started his renovations with the west end of the church from 1135-40, creating the first three portaled west facade.

The facade is currently undergoing renovations and is boarded up, so I'm including a photo from wikimedia taken by Ordifana75.

Basilica-Cathedral St Denis, June 2015

Photo by Ordifana75, 2010

A few things to note are the three portals, the circular rose window(which now has clock hands) with the symbols of the evangelists/beasts of Revelation in the 4 corners around it, and the crenelations along the top of the building, giving it the look of a castle.

The central portal depicts the Last Judgement.  Here is a photo of the door - with a mini Suger at the bottom left of the last supper image (right side, two down) - and the stone portal above it, with an image of Christ in Majesty, hands outflung as if hanging on the cross, that I took in 2003. (The other two doorways, both of which depict scenes of St. Denis' life, have been heavily restored.  The left portal is flanked by stone sculpture of the signs of the zodiac, while the right is flanked by a calendar of work done during each month.  Both of these are used by later cathedrals.)

The east end of the church (choir and chevet) was rebuilt next, from 1140-44.  This included lots of stained glass (the entire upper level of which was melted down for its lead and so contains modern glass).  He also had a double ambulatory constructed, so large numbers of pilgrims could walk around the chapels without disturbing the monks at worship.

The chevet

Ambulatory and radiating chapels

The nave, connecting Suger's two projects, was rebuilt starting in 1231 by Abbot Odo Clement, in the Rayonnant Gothic style, with thin walls and lots of windows.  The triforium level, usually backed by stone, was instead filled with stained glass, in addition to the windows in the aisle and clerestory, almost creating a wall of glass.

Nave

Elevation of the nave

The north transept sculpture (as well as the entire east end of the church, inner transept arms and crypt) is only visible if you pay to see the east end (normally Eur 8.50, but reduced to 6.50 when I was there due to the renovation work), is mostly broken archivolt sculpture.  There are traces on the bottom left of what may have been annunciation and visitation scenes, while the right shows definite signs of some sort of hell scene.  The stone tympanum has been replaced with wood.


















The south transept has been restored and shows scenes of the life of St. Denis in the tympanum, with kings in the archivolts and on the jambs and a Virgin and Child trumeau.

For my trip I created a one page layout of the cathedral and all of its sculpture.  I was a little too rushed to use it properly, but I've updated it (based on what I learned on my trip) and present it here for anyone wishing to use it for their own trip or research.  If you use this for a website or school paper, please credit me as the creator and/or link back to this post.  The map of the tombs and the dates of those resting in them comes from this UK Tourism 93 website.  

[I'm not sure how to upload them as pdfs so I've converted them to jpgs.  They're printable, but the text is a bit blurry.  If you want the pdf files, email me and I'll send them to you.]