Amiens Cathedral west front

Abstract

This enchanting piece of sculpture is from the west front of Amiens Cathedral, and was carved in the 1220s. It is one of a series of two layers of quatrefoils, which run as a band right across the west front, below the column figures that flank the three great portals, and around the buttresses that divide the portals one from another. This layer—architectural historians refer to it as the socle—is at eye-level; and here, as at many other gothic cathedrals, the clergy commissioned (and sculptors carved) some of the most immediate and eye-catching art in the entire building. The central portal carries images of the virtues and vices, of which the vices are, predictably, the more amusing: a knight, representing cowardice, drops his sword and flees from a rabbit popping out of a hole; a …