Pillar with Folks Praying-Large   CO27

The French cathedral in the town of Chartres, near Paris, is especially rich in finecraftsmanship. The figures in our picture are of the same stone as the columns and are part of them architecturally. Their gestures and expressions, like the simple pattern of their robes, seem frozen and unreal. And yet, in their very columnlike simplicity and rigid stiffness, they fulfill their architectural purpose admirably. Like the saints in the Byzantine paintings and mosaics of this period, their stylized, formal quality was set by tradition and by the church.

The Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris shows us the ingenuity and humor of medieval sculpture. Early in the Gothic period, sculptors adorned walls and roofs of churches with awe-inspiring monsters, symbolizing the devil's evil ways. Those extending from the wall as spouts for rain water are known as gargoyles; those that simply served to scare men into mending their ways are called chimeras. Late Gothic sculptors created many fanciful figures.