Note 146 — Chapter VI · Six of the Lesser Great Cathedrals: Bourges, Beauvais, Troyes, Tours, Lyons, Le Mans

The same feat can be seen in St. Nizier at Troyes, rebuilt in 1528 and literally filled with XVI-century glass. Its best window is in the transept (1552), and shows the beasts of heresy trampled upon, for that day was nothing if not controversial. In a central window of the choir, the Descent of the Holy Ghost, the artist made the hands of a figure in one panel appear in the neighboring panel, regardless of the stone mullions. In 1901 an anarchist bomb exploded in St. Nizier, and in 1910 a terrible storm wrecked more of its windows. The church possesses a Saint Sépulcre and a Christ de Pité in which the Gothic spirit lingers. Its reredos, now in the Museum, was from the Juliot atelier. Her international fairs early accustomed Troyes to foreign influences. Flemish realism had fortified her sculptors and vitrine artists, and during the first third of the XVI century (when the trade of the city tripled itself) the new Italian ideas found favor. For a generation the just and loyal measure of Champagne’s own Gothic tradition held the leadership, but finally the Italian Renaissance conquered. When abstract types were substituted for types precisely observed, imagery became cold, declamatory, and pretentious. In several of the churches of Troyes will be found the Education of the Virgin by her mother, St. Anne, a theme for which this city had a partiality.