CAPITAL OF COLUMNS IN THE PORCH OF NOTRE DAME AT DIJON
_London. Published by J & A Arch. Cornhill. March 1^{ st}. 1828._]
The principal is that of St. Michel, which is said to have been built, or rebuilt in 1030, and restored in 1338. But in 1497 it threatened ruin, and the parish repaired it, and added the present choir. Here the windows are very long and narrow. Some are united in pairs, with a rose over them, but not included in any common arch. At the ends of the transept the rose windows and the openings below them are filled with tracery. The aisles are high and well lighted, but the general effect is heavy and displeasing. The western portal is the most singular part of the edifice. The architect was Hugues Sambin, a native of Dijon, who is said to have been the friend and pupil of M. Angelo Buonarotti. The porch is a return to the first Gothic style of shafts and statues; the latter indeed have been destroyed in the storms of the revolution, except those in the soffites of the arches, where angels are represented with wings and fiddles, and these are very little damaged. Many parts are ornamented with Arabesques, and some of the capitals have the Gothic trefoil topsy-turvy. The arches are semicircular, and are surmounted by an entablature in a continued line. It seems, that on the first introduction of Italian Architecture, the first period of the _renaissance_, as everybody here calls it, the great lines of the construction were better preserved than they were afterwards. I met a gentleman who contended that this porch was copied from a Roman arch of triumph, and presented all the characters of one, though there is in fact no resemblance. The ease with which a Frenchman seems to utter all that comes into his head, without any fear of ridicule, ought, one would think, to give him an opportunity of speedily correcting his errors, but for some reason or other this does not take place. The middle of the porch has a little cupola. Over the porch, the five orders of architecture, disposed in all ways, are heaped over one another, “as if,” said a blacksmith, in whose shop I sheltered myself from a shower of rain, “they had got hold of Vignola, and determined to execute all he had described.” This remark was the more just, as the orders really resemble those of Vignola. It would do well for a front to St. Eustache, at Paris. The two other churches of this group are no longer used as places of worship, and the outsides did not incite me to be at the trouble of examining them within.