Christ, he is here introduced, on the second pier, near the base, crowned with laurel.  The incident of the cutting off of the servant’s ear, by Peter, is positively entertaining.  Peter is sawing away industriously at the offending member; a fisherman ought to understand a more deft use of the knife!  In the scenes of the Creation, depicted on the first pier, Maitani has proved himself a real nature lover in the tender way he has demonstrated the joy of the birds at finding the use of their wings.

The earliest sculptures in France were very rude,—­it was rather a process than an art to decorate a building with carvings as the Gauls did!  But the latent race talent was there; as soon as the Romanesque and Byzantine influences were felt, a definite school of sculpture was formed in France; almost at once they seized on the best elements of the craft and abandoned the worthless, and the great note of a national art was struck in the figures at Chartres, Paris, Rheims, and other cathedrals of the Ile de France.

Prior to this flowering of art in Northern France, the churches of the South of France developed a charming Romanesque of their own, a little different from that in Italy.  A monk named Tutilon, of the monastery of St. Gall, was among the most famous sculptors of the Romanesque period.  Another name is that of Hughes, Abbot of Montier-en-Der.  At the end of the tenth century one Morard, under the patronage of King Robert, built and ornamented the Church of St. Germain des Pres, Paris, while Guillaume, an Abbot at Dijon, was at the head of the works of forty monasteries.  Guillaume probably had almost as wide an influence upon French art as St. Bernward had on the German, or Nicola Pisano on that of Italy.  In Metz were two noted architects, Adelard and Gontran, who superintended the building of fourteen churches, and an early chronicler says that the expense was so great that “the imperial treasury would scarce have sufficed for it.”

At Arles are two of the most famous monuments of Romanesque art, the porches of St. Trophime, and of St. Gilles.  The latter exhibits almost classical feeling and influence; the former is much blunter and more Byzantine; both are highly interesting for purposes of study, being elaborately ornamented with figure sculptures and other decorative motives.

Abbot Suger, the art-craftsman par excellence of the Ile de France, was the sculptor in chief of St. Denis from 1137 to 1180.  This magnificent facade is harmonious in its treatment, betokening plainly that one brain conceived and carried out the plan.  We have not the names of the minor architects and sculptors who were employed, but doubtless they were the scholars and followers of Suger, and rendered work in a similar manner.

There are some names which have been handed down from early times in Normandy:  one Otho, another Garnier, and a third, Anquetil, while a crucifix carved by Auquilinus of Moissac was popularly believed to have been created by divine means.  If one will compare the statues of St. Trophime of Arles with those at St. Denis, it will be found that the latter are better rounded, those at St. Trophime being coarsely blocked out; although at first glance one would say that there was little to choose between them.