More beautiful than the fourteenth-century screen of Notre-Dame de Paris, but inferior in unity and nobility of feeling to the _Pourtoir_ of Amiens, this Clôture, although executed at various periods, is one in design. The plan of forty groups, representing the principal scenes in the life of the Virgin and the Gospel story was drawn up by the Chancellor of the Chapter, Mainterne, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The work was begun in 1514 under Jehan de Beauce. It was continued in 1611 by Boudin. It was finished by various sculptors at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the style naturally varies from late Gothic to Renaissance. The earliest work is the best.
It comprises the first twelve groups in the south ambulatory. These were wrought by or under the supervision of Jehan Soulas, a Parisian sculptor, engaged for that purpose by the Chapter (1518). For Jehan de Beauce, being an architect and not a sculptor, was responsible only for the framework, and not for the groups of figures. But that framework is a masterpiece of delicate grace and prolific imagination. A wealth of ornament, of foliage and arabesques, of mythical personages and fantastic beasts, covers the base and the innumerable columns about it. The stone openwork above and the canopies are exquisite in their lightness and finish. Before he died in 1529 Jehan de Beauce had passed completely under the influence of the Renaissance. The elegant and ingenious clock tower, which breaks the series of niches on the south side of the clôture, with its decorative Titus and Vespasian, and so forth, gives evidence of this. The elaborate clockwork with which it was originally provided, and which showed the days, hours, months, time of sunrise and sunset, and signs of the Zodiac, was destroyed in 1793. The initial F, with a crown, which appears on the vertical band, refers to the then reigning François I.
Apart from the infinite variety of other ornamental details in which the framework is so rich, there are thirty-five medallions on the base. The first on the south side refers to the Siege of Chartres by Rollo in 911; the next fifteen to the lives of David, Daniel, Moses, Samson, Abraham and Jonas; the next twelve to mythological subjects--Labours of Hercules--and the last seven are heads of Roman emperors.