Paray-le-Monial, Notre-Dame,
ambulatory. Photograph courtesy of
Whitney S.Stoddard.
the upper wall, separating the forechoir from the choir, in the nine clerestory windows
beneath the semidome, in the high windows of the ambulatory, and in the five low
windows in each of the three radiating chapels.
The west towers and narthex of Paray-le-Monial are an earlier, smaller campaign than
the church proper, with the south tower earlier than the north one. The west end dates
from the second half of the 11th century; the church proper was constructed in the early
decades of the 12th.
Sculpture at Paray-le-Monial consists of floral capitals throughout the church, and
geometric and abstract ornament on the two transept portals.
Whitney S.Stoddard
[See also: AUTUN; CLUNY]
Armi, C.Edson. Masons and Sculptors in Romanesque Burgundy. 2 vols. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983, pp. 171–76; figs. 216–22.
Stoddard, Whitney S. Monastery and Cathedral in France. Middletown: Wesleyan University
Press, 1966, pp. 39–47, 52, 56; figs. 40, 45–46, 48, 51–52, 54–55.
——. Sculptors of the West Portals of Chartres Cathedral New York: Norton, 1987 [Transept
portals, pp. 48–49; Plate XXXIV, 1, 2.]
Virey, Jean. Paray-le-Monial et les églises du Brionnais. Paris: Laurens, 1926.
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