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The Lepers and the Kings

The 12th Century French Abbey of St. Pierre, Moissac

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The Tympanum : Vision in Stone 1 2 3

The Stone
The great door of the abbey of St. Pierre today opens onto the south side of the narthex, a rare but not unknown placement for the principle entrance. In this position, it faces a market square, today dominated by cafés and boutiques, on a line with a major avenue of approach from a city gate. The structure of the narthex contains anomolies - misalignments, fortifications, layers of construction - that suggest major alterations in the conception of the narthex over time. This leaves open the possibility that the tympanum (or a tympanum) originally occupied the space over the west entrance and was moved to the south as a part of a major building campaign.

    In any case, the tympanum is now placed not on a minor accent of the plan of the church (the south as opposed to the west door) but in a more central position facing the plan of the city. The west facade of the abbey faces almost directly on a steep hill; the south facade faces toward the river, the direction the city was growing, and opens directly upon what was at the time a busy market square. The space and the audience of the tympanum on the south are not those of monastic retreat, but are intimately bound to daily urban life. map of city

 

  The formal center of the tympanum sculpture, the Christ figure, only becomes clearly visible at close range. The appropriate view of the tympanum, however, does not begin at close range but, at the suggestion of the architecture itself, at the corner of the rue République and the rue sainte Catherine, the end of the ancient rue St. Pierre, the appropriately named approach to the abbey. From that distance the depth of the porch collapses into alternating plain and ornamented framing bands around the image in the tympanum, only dimly perceived in the shadows. The light catches on the lintel of rosettes, which serves to bring the plane of the tympanum to the surface of the outside wall. As the viewer walks up the street toward the porch, however, the space opens up, the lines of the archivolts give depth to the barrel vault, which draws the viewer into what becomes a new space, as though space of a different order simply cut through the space of the outside world. [ 1 ] At the same time, these elements radiate from the central composition in an explosion of energy. [ 2 ] The initial impression of a perceptually closed surface gives way to a grid system with radiating elements. A series of images that approach the portal.   At close range, the sculpture of the tympanum begins to move. The seated figures turn upon an axis, twisting toward the central figure. Instinctively, the eye reads the figures on the lower row as twisting backwards because they are in front of the central figure and must look up and back to see him. Similarly, the less contorted gaze of the figures above makes them appear to be behind and looking forward.

The movement might be described as "round about the throne of God" for it occurs as though on the edges of the peripheral vision as the gaze focuses on the central figure. The rich complexity of the positions of the seated figures, combined with their physiognomic similarity, teases the eye into perceiving them, not as fixed in their individual places, but as interweaving, merging into and out of one another, as participating in a continuous movement with neither a beginning nor an end. Here there is no opposition of saved and damned, right and left, or even up and down. The underlying structure of the tympanum is circularity and constant motion.

Detail of tympanum

 

 

This animation appears to be inherent not only in the tympanum itself but to have been deliberately enhanced by the surrounding elements with which it has been combined, the most provocative of which is the lintel of rosettes, generally regarded as something of an oddity. Often ignored and frequently left out of photographs of the tympanum, the lintel plays a critical role in holding the entire doorway together and setting up its motion. Its sheer size precludes its having been inserted simply as decorative filler or as an ornamental band devoid of meaning. It is there for a reason. Meyer Schapiro, the only art historian to consider the lintel as a separate unit of the composition (although, admittedly, he leaves no stone unexamined) says, the "effect of this beautiful frieze is one of intense and sustained movement because of recurrent radiation." [ 3 ]

The rosettes, placed at slightly irregular intervals and linked by strands of foliage, act as complex, rhythmic, and repeated patterns. The central point of the band, between the fourth and fifth rosettes, does not fall exactly on the median line of the tympanum, but slightly to the left. The space between the fifth and sixth, and sixth and seventh rosettes, larger than the other intervals, allows for the insertion of small masks, similar to those that appear elsewhere in the doorway. Visually, however, the linking elements play a less significant role than the irregularity of spacing which sets up a perceptual tension between the desire of the eye to scan evenly over identical motifs and the ever-so-slight interruptions in that process. The result is motion, for the pattern refuses to stay in the fixed position the eye wishes it to have. [ 4 ]

The irregular spacing of the line of rosettes extends to the ends of the lintel where two more rosettes are cut off by the frame. The lines are anchored, however, by matching beasts whose mouths sprout the acanthus vines that link the rosettes. These balanced end motifs are superimposed over the final rosettes, counteracting their lack of symmetry. They play a strong role, however, in setting up the expectation that the pattern will have what the eye expects it to have – a center. The pattern, quite deliberately however, does not have that center and so the eye seeks a center elsewhere.

The sculpture traps the viewer within converging systems of spatial representation. The main line of approach to the doorway intersects the planar wall of the church, and the implied continuation of that plane across the threshold, at right angles. The impetus of the viewer extends that line into the door, across the narthex and, at least potentially, toward the cloister beyond. The porch constitutes a charged space that interrupts that movement with complex, interweaving lines of force which do not stop that progress but enhance and transform it. The lintel which, from a distance down the street constitutes a strong horizontal element anchoring the tympanum visually to the outer plane of the wall, gradually dissolves into a line of centric units, each of the rosettes becoming separate, rotating elements within the grid lines of the approach.

Unlike "Last Judgment" tympana that contain an inherent opposition, no opposition of any kind takes place in the tympanum of Moissac. Rather, the rotation and symmetry of like elements suggests movement within stillness, or "immobile movement." [ 5 ] The sculptors of the tympanum at Moissac have established a syntax and a vocabulary in stone for conveying the paradoxical nature of God as seen within the vision.

The transition from the plane of the ground to the plane of the wall that contains the lintel takes place through the trumeau whose climbing, crossed lions stress its vertical, upward movement. The subtle, half-concealed rosettes behind these lions animate them, echoing and re-echoing the scalloped edges of the door jambs. The lions, although apparently identical and functioning as identical patterns, nevertheless differ in sex. They are paired male and female, unified within their opposition. They constitute an organic statement of movement within stillness. [ 6 ]

Thus, at the lowest level of the doorway, the grid of horizontal, vertical, and movement in depth subtly and yet powerfully begins to change into the full rotation of the tympanum. Forward movement has already been established by the viewer's approach; horizontal movement is established by the wall of the church, the boundary of the sacred precinct; vertical movement is established by the trumeau, reinforced by the climbing lions, the scallops of the jambs, and the links between the trumeau rosettes and the lintel rosettes above. The rosettes of the lintel establish radiation, a centric system which is the key to the perception of the tympanum.

The Tympanum : Vision in Stone 1_2_3

Notes

1. Studies of the psychology of perception observe a loss of depth perception with distance and a corresponding reorientation of planes so as to face the viewer. (See Patrick Heelan, Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), especially 64-65). Return.

2. For a development of the argument of the simultaneous occurence of centrifugal and centripetal forces, see Rudolf Arnheim, The Power of the Center (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) 23. Applying Arnheim's argument to the perception of the doorway involves shifts in the field the doorway is considered in, its outward radiation occuring in relation to the center of the doorway itself and its inward radiation in relationship to external points of attraction, such as the mass of the portal structure. Return.

3. Meyer Shapiro, The Sculpture of Moissac (Braziller 1985) 105. Return.

4. This, as well as the following observations of the visual effects of ornament depend upon E.H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979). See especially his study of the differences in perception of regular and irregular patterns (pp. 8-9, esp.). Perceptually, the lintel of rosettes falls into neither category for its apparent regularity balances its actual irregularity. Return.

5. An examination of the visual idea of unity within opposition may be found in Jean-Claude Bonne, L'art roman de face et de profil (Le tympan de Conques) (Alencon: S.F.I.E.D., 1984). Bonne quotes Jean Scot Erigène (De. div. nat., I) on the idea of God as "immoble motion." Return.

6. Bonne: 197 notes the Moissac trumeau as an example of unity within opposition. Return.

© 2001 Susan R. Dixon