nave and chevet were covered by nearly square sexpartite vaults, while the transept arms
had rectangular quadripartite vaults. Laon cathedral was planned with seven towers, two
each on the west façade and both transept façades, as well as the central lantern tower
that provides the focus of the interior space. In its measured regularity and expansiveness,
as well as its four-story elevation, Laon achieves the appearance of large size and scale,
even though it is only about 75 feet tall.
The west façade is characterized by a dramatic interplay of projections and recessions,
of porches and doors, arches and windows, that culminates in the enormous rose window
and the façade towers that shift from square to octagonal plan. Any sense of the heaviness
of walls or buttresses is hidden by pinnacles and gables. The design is enhanced at all
levels by sculptural decoration, beginning with the three portals. That on the south
contains the oldest sculpture, a cut-down tympanum of the Last Judgment with two
archivolts of angels. Additional archivolts and a new lintel showing the Separation of the
Saved and the Damned were added when the sculpture was installed ca. 1195–1200. The
present statue-columns, like those of the other portals, were created by Geoffroy-
Dechaume during the 19th-century restorations.
The central portal is devoted to the Coronation of the Virgin, with the Tree of Jesse,
angels, and prophets in the archivolts. The present lintel was created by Geoffroy-
Dechaume. From the standpoint of both style and iconography, the most interesting portal
at Laon is the north portal of the façade. The tympanum, through careful design, manages
to combine the theme of Virgin as the Seat of Wisdom with the Adoration of the Magi,
even as the sculptor explores a new sense of spatial expansiveness in the composition and
placement of figures. The archivolts show angels, the Triumph of the Virtues over the
Vices, and prefigurations of Salvation. The lintel shows the Annunciation, the Nativity,
and the Angels appearing to the Shepherds.
Each of the portals is framed by a deep porch topped by a gable with figure sculpture,
the subjects of which enhance the portals. For example, above the Last Judgment portal
stands St. Michael flanked by two seated angels; above the central portal is a giant Virgin
and Child flanked by angels. This suggests that the traditional, but unfounded,
identification of the central gable figure above the north portal as St. Proba should be
reconsidered; the scene may be the Assumption of the Virgin.
Four ranks of archivolts flank the two lateral lancet windows of the façade and extend
the iconographic program to include the Liberal Arts, together with Architecture,
Medicine, and Philosophy, flanked by dragons and foliage (north window), and a
Creation cycle flanked by eagles and foliage above the Last Judgment portal on the south.
Tying the whole façade together are the numerous bands of foliage ornament, punctuated
by corbels and consoles, used both to emphasize and to conceal shifts in planes and
changes in level. Like the highly colored and
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