ANGERS

. Situated on both banks of the River Maine, five miles north of its confluence with the Loire, Angers (Maine-et-Loire) is rich in monuments exhibiting a Gothic style, Angevin Gothic, that is quite different from the Early and High Gothic of the ile-de-France. Besides the famous 14th-century tapestries of the Apocalypse exhibited inside the castle, Angers has a series of buildings that reveal both the uniqueness and the quality of this local, western French style and its evolution over a span of a hundred years.

Angers had long been governed by the counts of Anjou, some of whom had been dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine, counts of Brittany, and kings of England. Geoffroi IV Plantagenet was the father of King Henry II of England, who was the husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine and father of Richard I the Lionhearted. In 1204, Angers surrendered to the Capetian king Philip II Augustus, and later in the century Louis IX had vast walls built to protect Angers. These walls were flattened to create the boulevards surrounding the city.

The powerful castle of Angers was begun under Count Foulques III Nerra to protect Anjou from the Normans. After surrender to the Capetians, Louis IX rebuilt Foulques’s castle in whitestone with contrasting bands of black slate on two levels, and the seventeen semicircular towers were crowned by overhanging turrets. In the course of the 14 th and 15th centuries, the dukes of Anjou continued to embellish the castle: Louis II, nephew of the French king Charles V, and his wife, Yolande d’Aragon, added the Gothic chapel, and their son, the “good duke” Rene d’Anjou, constructed comfortable living quarters overlooking the Maine. Parts of the castle were dismantled during the Wars of Religion of the 16th century, but much remains of this magnificent example of medieval military architecture.

The three square bays of the nave of the cathedral of Saint-Maurice, which were vaulted with domical, ribbed vaults between 1149 and 1153, exhibit the beginnings of Angevin Gothic. The exterior walls of the nave, with evenly spaced wall buttresses, belong to the 12th-century cathe

Angers (Maine-et-Loire), chateau, ramparts, and moat. Photograph:

Clarence Ward Collection. Courtesy of Oberlin College.

Dral, which may have been connected to a choir and short transept with chapels excavated in 1902. This 11th-century nave was covered with either a wooden roof or domes rising from pendentives (the span of 50 feet is too wide for a barrel vault). The single-nave vessel appears often in the Romanesque of the region; the single nave, vaulted with domes, can be found in the Dordogne (Cahors, Souillac) up through western France (Perigueux, Angouleme to Fontevrault, 35 miles southeast of Angers). In the mid-12th-century campaign of the cathedral of Angers, new, large wall buttresses were added to the exterior corners of the three bays, while new thick responds with multiple colonnettes supported the transverse, diagonal, and longitudinal ribs of the four-part vaults. These domical vaults have stylistic connections with those in the north and south tower of Chartres cathedral (1134 and after 1145); the elevation of Angers exhibits connections with the nave of Le Mans. In spite of these relationships to Chartres, to Le Mans, and to the cupolas on the pendentives of Fontevrault, Saint-Maurice is a creative synthesis of Romanesque and Early Gothic characteristics.

Between the completion of the nave of Saint-Maurice in the mid-12th century and the construction of its transepts and choir in the 13th, several monuments in Angers reveal stages in the evolving Angevin Gothic. At Saint-Martin, excavated by an American team under George H. Forsyth, Jr., a small Merovingian church of the 7th century was enlarged in two campaigns in the 9th and 10th centuries by the addition of crossing, transepts, and choir with chapels on the ends of each. Surmounting the crossing was a wooden tower. In the 11th century, the lower section of the crossing tower was reinforced. Finally, after the middle of the 12th century, a new Gothic choir was constructed in two stages: the western square bay and the eastern bay and apse. This western bay is crowned by a domical vault supported by two transverse ribs, two wall ribs, two diagonal ribs, ridge ribs, and two ribs springing from a column between the windows. Thus, twelve ribs strengthen the webbing of the vault. The middle bay is

Angers, Saint-Maurice, plan. After Conant.

More domical in profile and with the same number but thinner ribs. The windows of the middle bay are considerably larger. Finally, the eastern apse has five even larger windows with more complicated frames of three colonnettes supporting the archivolts. This choir, ca. 1150-80, led stylistically to the vaulting of the transept and choir of the cathedral of Angers in the first half of the 13th century.

One other monument in Angers was built before the transept and choir of the cathedral, the Hospice Saint-Jean. Founded in 1180 with a papal bull and two charters signed by King Henry II in 1181, the Hospice consisted of a three-aisled rectangle of eight bays, square chapel, cloister, and separate granary. The room for the sick has aisles and nave of the same height covered with four-part, domical vaults with thin rounded ribs. Used as a hospital until 1865, the spaces were originally divided into wards by screens. The elegance of the ribs is the main characteristic of the Angevin style in the late years of the 12th century.

The four square bays, which comprise the transept and choir of the cathedral of Angers, reveal the stylistic influence of Saint-Martin and the Hospice. The ribs are a simple torus molding under the domical vaults, which are doubled or widened for the transverse and wall ribs. Eight-part vaults of diagonals, ridge ribs, and liernes spring to the central keystone from the keystone of the wall (or longitudinal) rib. The marked domical profile, the thin rib, and eight-part vaults are exactly like the eastern bay of the choir of Saint-Martin. Transept and choir of the cathedral were built in the first half of the 13th century; the narrow bay and apse date from the second half of the 13th century.

One outstanding example of Angevin Gothic remains to be discussed: the choir of the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Serge. The plan consists of a four-bay nave with smaller aisles, all the same height. Nave bays and the three western bays are capped with eight-part, domical vaults with thin, rounded ribs—transverse, longitudinal, ridge, diagonals, and two ribs springing from the keystone of the longitudinal ribs. The carved and polychromed keystones capture eight ribs. With ribs of different lengths, the bay becomes domical in shape with the ribs visible on the top of the vaults. Flanking the nave and aisles are chapels of two bays at a higher level. A small square apse extends eastward. The ribs multiply in the eastern half of the apse,

Angers, Saint-Maurice, nave elevation and section. After Losowska.

Eastern bays of the aisles, and eastern bay of the north chapel. The proliferation of ribs by the addition of more liernes exhibits, together with the thinness of the nave supports, the decorative delicacy of the structure.

It is the Angevin Gothic of the choir of the cathedral, of Saint-Martin, and of Saint-Serge that spreads beyond the walls of Angers and to the south of the Loire River. Angevin Gothic is a unique style, found only in areas around Angers and to the south. Little attention is given to the exteriors, since no flying buttresses were utilized. Often, these buildings consist of a single nave or interior spaces of the same height with emphasis on elaborate vaulting.

In the nave and crossing of the cathedral of Saint-Maurice are floral capitals vaguely following the Corinthian type, often with human heads and elaborately carved abaci. The west portal of the cathedral is based on the west-central portal of Chartres. Christ in

Majesty, surrounded by the four Evangelists, is located in the tympanum. The lintel and trumeau were destroyed in the 18th century to enlarge the entrance to the cathedral. The figure style resembles that of some of the sculpture on the archivolts of the three west portals and on the tympana of the side portals of Chartres. This sculptural campaign is probably contemporary with or slightly later than the vaulting of the nave of the cathedral (1149-53).

Carved capitals in the choir and apse of Saint-Martin are mostly nonfigurative. In the apse and eastern bay, six statues once stood on columns with capitals and visually supported the ribs. In style, they appear to date ca. 1180. They are now in the Yale University Museum.

The ornamental and figurative sculpture on capitals, keystones of some arches, and on all complicated keystones of each vault of the choir of Saint-Serge echoes, in its detailed carving and polychromy, the elegance of the architecture.

Whitney S. Stoddard

[See also: ANJOU; APOCALYPSE TAPESTRY: GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE]

Forsyth, George H., Jr. The Church of St. Martin at Angers: The Architectural History from the Roman Empire to the French Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953, esp. pp. 167-86, figs. 200-07.

Mussat, Andre. Le style gothique de I’ouest de la France (Xlle - Xllle siecles). Paris: Picard, 1963, esp. pp. 173-239.

Sauerlander, Willibald. Gothic Sculpture in France 1140-1270. London: Thames and Hudson,

1972.

Urseau, Charles. La cathedrale d’Angers. Paris: Laurens, 1927.