The modern tower was
built by Louis XII. in 1514, the architect being an inhabitant of Beauce,
a certain Jean Texier.
The carvings in the west front of the cathedral are examples of the
beginning of French sculpture, as it emerges from the severity and
rigidity of Byzantine types. The human figures are long, slender, and
swathed almost like mummies in their drapery. The faces are strongly
individualized and seem to be portraits. While these statues must be
attributed to a period previous to the middle of the twelfth century, we
see in them the originality of French genius struggling to break away from
the fetters of Eastern precedent.
Viollet-de-Duc thinks that these faces belong to the type of the ancient
Gaul; the flat forehead and raised arch of the eyebrows, the projecting
eyes, the long jaws, the peaked and drooping nose, the long upper lip, the
wide, closed mouth, the square chin, the long wavy hair are neither
German, Roman, or French. There is a blending of firmness, grandeur and
refinement in these wonderful countenances, each of them apparently copied
from a different model.
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