Note 227 — Chapter VIII · Gothic in the Midi
Reading edition
When Moissac was affiliated with Cluny and reformed, its church was rebuilt by Abbot Durand, whose image adorns a pier of the cloister’s east gallery. The walls of the nave belong to the edifice consecrated in 1063. That church of three aisles was remade with cupolas and blessed in 1180, and of the same date are the fortified narthex and its tower. Owing to those defenses the celebrated portal is in the south wall of the porch, not in the church axis. The Gothic ribs beneath the tower are rectangular and three feet wide. In the XIV century the cupolas were replaced by diagonals. The cloisters were begun about 1100 under Abbot Ansquitil, who made the pier images, also the marble parts of the portal, its trumeau, and the Visitation. Abbot Roger (1115-31) finished the cloisters, inscribing the carved Scripture scenes of the capitals. During the first quarter of the XII century Moissac’s imagery passed from the squat, coarsely executed figures of the cloister piers to the appealing, etherealized types—“fluides créations du Languedoc”—the Annunciation group. Mr. A. Kingsley Porter thinks that door-jamb-figure sculpture was first used by Guglielmo at Modena Cathedral (c. 1100), and from Italy passed into southern France. The current of art flowed in the opposite direction, too, for the coupled colonnettes, typical of the Romanesque cloisters of Provence, Languedoc, and Spain, soon found their way across the Alps, where early examples are to be seen at Verona and Aosta, and at the cathedral door of Verona are Languedoc’s elongated figures with crossed feet. The Portico de la gloria at Santiago sets forth the vision of John the Beloved at Patmos quite as Moissac’s tympanum presents it. Congrès Archéologique, 1901, vol. 2, pp. 43, 303; E. Rupin, Abbaye et les cloîtres de Moissac (Paris, Picard, 1897); André Michel, “Sculpture romane de Moissac,” in Bull. de la Soc. Archéol. du Midi de la France, 1899 to 1901; Roger Peyre, Padoue et Vérone (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens).