After a charming ride of fifty kilometres from Eymoutiers, we arrive at
Limoges, sloping picturesquely up from the banks of the winding river
Vienne. We elsewhere set out our reasons for believing that the
Byzantine influence upon the beginnings of French art was first and most
potently exercised at Limoges, the cradle of French enamel. After
remaining dormant for centuries, the enameller's art has again been
quickened into life in its old home. Its younger sister, stained glass,
however, never seems to have returned to its birthplace; in fact, if it
were not necessary to pass through Limoges on our way north from
Eymoutiers, we would not have included it in this trip. While the
cathedral contains some fourteenth century glass, it lacks sufficient
quantity or quality to repay one coming from a distance to see it. From
Eymoutiers our route takes us through Limoges, and what it can show of
glass, we, like conscientious pilgrims, must not fail to inspect. Now
for the cathedral! Architecturally it is very satisfactory. Just inside
the west door of the nave there is a finely-carved stone jube or arch,
in fact so good is it that we shall not see a better except in the
little church of La Madeleine at Troyes, or in St. Etienne-du-Mont in
Paris. Around the clerestory of the choir are thirteen double lancet
windows, presented in the fourteenth century by Bishop Pierre Rodier.
Unfortunately, only two of them (those of Ste. Valerie and St. Martial)
are preserved intact, but the others have been so judiciously restored
that we have a very good idea of how they originally looked. They
consist of large coloured figures in canopies, surrounded, however, by
too much grisaille. The revulsion from too little light in the preceding
century sometimes produced the curse of too much in the fourteenth. This
placing of subjects upon a light surface cannot help but cause an
unpleasant contrast between its soft tone and the stronger colour of the
figures. In the ambulatory chapels on the north side of the choir, there
are two complete windows of this period, both of them grisaille with
gay heraldic devices and coloured borders. In one the light field is
arranged in quarries (diamond-shaped spaces), each quarry having its own
little border of colour; this is very unusual. Here the contrast of rich
tones and grisaille is not so disagreeable as in the clerestory. In the
south transept is a large rose window containing conventional designs in
red and blue, but no figures. We find the same objection to the placing
of this window and to its construction that we did to the rose windows
at Clermont-Ferrand: it is too high up and seems crowded against the
roof, while its lines radiate so obviously from the centre as to make it
resemble a wheel, whose spokes are too thick. The century before did
well to have medallions placed around the central opening of its rose
windows, for they gave the effect of a huge blossom and not the stiff
look of a wheel. As we leave Limoges on our way to Poitiers we shall
find, if we travel by automobile or bicycle, that the road along the
Vienne, following the picturesque windings of that charming river, is
one of the most delightful in all France.