The _Ste. Chapelle_ of St. Germain-en-Laye must have been built some years before that of the royal palace of Paris. It is remarkable for certain peculiarities of structure which show a greater architectural skill; the piers which sustain the vault have a greater interior projection; the formerets are disengaged from the wall, and the square windows occupy the whole space between the buttresses, and rise to close beneath the cornice. This most original and learned arrangement gives the building a very graceful aspect, and brings out its elegant proportions. The _Ste. Chapelle_ of Vincennes, begun by Charles VI., was not completed until the reign of Henry II. In construction it is akin to that of Paris. The two-storied annexes which formed the sacristies and treasury were finished towards the close of the fifteenth century. After the example of kings and princes the great abbeys began to raise important oratories independent of their conventual churches. The Abbey of St. Martin des Champs at Paris founded two large chapels about the middle of the thirteenth century,--one dedicated to the Virgin, and the other to St. Michael. Pierre de Montereau was commissioned to build, in addition to the _Ste. Chapelle_ of the palace, a chapel dedicated to the Virgin, within the precincts of the Abbey of St. Germain des Prés; the plan of the vaults differs here from that of the Ste. Chapelle of the palace. According to a drawing by Alexander Lenoir, made before the destruction of this chapel of the Virgin, the pointed arches comprised two bays, in imitation of the vaults on intersecting arches in Notre Dame of Paris, the origin of which we discussed in chapter vi. The Abbey of Châalis, near Senlis, founded by Louis the Fat in 1136, which was one of the most important abbeys of the Cistercian order in the thirteenth century, possessed an abbey church of five aisles, over 330 feet long. Towards the middle of the thirteenth century it nevertheless founded a _Ste. Chapelle_, known as the Chapelle de l'Abbé. The building has undergone various vicissitudes, and the ribbed vaults which date from the reign of St. Louis were once decorated with frescoes, attributed to Primaticcio. The building still exists, however, almost in its entirety. It illustrates the considerable influence exercised by the Ste. Chapelle of Paris from its very foundation on the great nobles, more especially the heads of rich abbeys eager to parade their immense power and wealth. CHAPTER XI SCULPTURE In the Middle Ages all the arts were auxiliary to architecture. The architect traced the details of his conception in the workshop, and superintended the construction; he directed stone-carvers, masons, sculptors, illuminators, painters, and glass-stainers, and laid his _imprimatur_ on every branch of the work of which he was the creator.