Rouen (France) -- Description and travel; Rouen (France) -- History
Think of the life and energy that were pulsing through the brain of
the craftsman who could so fill the surface of the stone. Think of the
time that he was ready to give up to patient chiselling at this one
task till it was perfect to his mind. And then consider more closely
the quatrefoils, small in themselves, which are yet far larger than
the details which surround them. The best known is one that has
suffered terribly in the wear and tear of nearly six centuries. It is
the famous bas-relief of the hooded pig playing on a violin, a motive
which recurs at Winchester and in York Minster. Its fingers are placed
so accurately upon the bow that the method of playing has formed a
type of late twelfth-century style in all collections of musical
antiquities. The Minstrel's Gallery in Exeter Cathedral may profitably
be compared with it. This accuracy of execution in an essential detail
shows the patient copying from life which accompanied--and indeed was
necessary to--the vivid imagination that could create so many
non-existent monsters. For among all these grotesque chimeras and
fantastic mixtures of the animal and human element you will notice the
creative faculty in its strongest development. These strange beasts,
half man and half a goat, part woman and part fish, have each of them
a reality of individual life, a possibility of visualised
construction, that is marvellous in its appeal to the spectator.
Another violin player appears upon this same door, this time with a
human head set on the body of a beast, and beside it some small
animal dances to the tune.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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