Note 193 — Chapter VII · Plantagenet Gothic Architecture[174]
Reading edition
From Saumur, eight miles down the Loire, can be visited the magnificent Romanesque church at Cunault, XI and XII centuries. It has noticeable capitals, mural paintings, and Plantagenet vaults with sculptured keystones and figurines. Two miles below it lies Gennes, whose church has Angevin vaults of the First Period. To be reached, via Doué-la-Fontaine, are both Puy-Notre-Dame and Asnières, the latter called “the most beautiful ruin in Anjou.” Its square-ended XIII-century choir resembles St. Serge’s. Slender pillars divide that wide chevet into three aisles of equal height, composing one of the most graceful specimens of the school’s Third Period. One arm of the transept has heavy diagonals of the first phase, and over the other are the eight-branch type. The Huguenots wrecked Asnières in 1569. The present nave is a restitution. A society of artists saved the choir and transept from demolition.
The abbatial of Puy-Notre-Dame is very beautiful. Heavy diagonals of the First Period cover the transept’s south arm; eight-branch vaults cover the nave and the transept’s north limb; over the choir, which resembles St. Jean’s chevet at Saumur, is a much-ramified Plantagenet vault. The lofty side aisles and clustered piers make this interior one of the best of XIII-century Angevin works extant. At St. Germain-sur-Vienne (Indre-et-Loire), two miles from Candes, the choir has the complicated multiple-ribbed vault of the Third Period, with three lines of keystones.
Congrès Archéologique, 1910, p. 128, Cunault and Gennes; p. 65, Puy-Notre-Dame and Asnières; E. de Lorière, “Asnières-sur-Vègre,” in Revue hist. et archéol. du Maine, 1904, p. 95.