GAUTIER DE VARINFROY
(fl. 13th c.). In October 1253, the bishop and chapter of Meaux appointed Gautier de
Varinfroy master mason of the cathedral, agreeing to pay an annual salary of ten pounds
but forbidding him to stay more than two months per year at Évreux, where he also
directed the cathedral workshop. Gautier’s career appears to have been devoted to the
restoration and modernization of older buildings: at Évreux, he constructed the triforium
and clerestory of the nave above a Romanesque arcade, while at Meaux he converted the
four-story choir into a three-story elevation composed of elaborate panels of tracery.
Stylistic analysis further suggests that this master mason rebuilt the upper levels of Saint-
Père, Chartres, in the 1240s and restored the western bays of the nave and façade of Sens
cathedral following the collapse of the southwest tower in 1268. Gautier’s insistence on
flat, linear effects, his tracery patterns, and pier design remain firmly within the
contemporary idiom of Île-de-France architecture, yet his ability to create smooth
transitions between new and older forms demonstrates a remarkable sensitivity and
stylistic flexibility.
Michael T.Davis
[See also: ÉVREUX; MEAUX; SENS]
Branner, Robert. Saint Louis and the Court Style in Gothic Architecture. London: Zwemmer, 1965.
Kimpel, Dieter, and Robert Suckale. Die gotische Architektur in Frankreich, 1130–1270. Munich:
Hirmer, 1985.
Kurmann, Peter. La cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Meaux. Paris: Droz, 1971.
——. “Gauthier de Varinfroy et le problème du style personnel d’un architecte au XIIIe siècle.” In
Les bâtisseurs des cathédrales gothiques, ed. Roland Recht. Strasbourg: Éditions les Musées de
la Ville de Strasbourg, 1989, pp. 186–94.
——, and Dethard von Winterfeld. “Gautier de Varinfroy, ein ‘Denkmalpfleger’ im 13.
Jahrhundert.” In Festschrift für Otto von Simson zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Lucius Grisebach and
Konrad Renger. Berlin: Propyläen, 1977, pp. 101–59.
GAUTIER LE LEU
(fl. late 13th c.). Although it has been suggested that Gautier Le Leu was a student at
Orléans and that later he had some association with the Benedictine abbey of Maroilles,
we can be certain only that he was a poet and jongleur of the second half of the 13th
century who was the most prolific author of fabliaux. He composed eleven fabliaux, of
which eight are extant. His compositions vary in inspiration from obscenity and ferocious
social and clerical satire (e.g., Le prestre teint) to lively character analysis, as in La veuve.
This poem features a character related to Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and to the Vieille in the
Roman de la Rose; she reacts to her husband’s death by grief more over sexual
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