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Small carvings


 

Difficult to observe since they are located in hardly visible places, small carvings are numerous in this church, as well as in others.
Most of the time they are keystones or bases of engaged columns and corbels .

Here are a few examples:

Corbels

The themes that are depicted are often religious (angels in pictures 1 and 3) but may also be secular and connected with everyday life as this man (picture 2) with a basket on his back : he might be one of the builders as we know that stonemasons used such baskets to carry bricks and stones.

Keystones

 

and this piscina with an angel holding a big head whose mouth used to pour water.

 

Humour

Obviously, stone carvers had to follow the master builder's plans and, in the lower parts of the building, carve the figures exactly as he had planned them. However, concerning upper parts that were hardly visible from below, some degee of freedom was left to the carvers, who could depart from the official stock of sculptures and work along more personal lines.
Thus, away from set forms and themes, humour can appear: twisted or grotesque figures, animals, familiar scenes of everyday life, etc...all of which being unexpected within a religious context.

See, for instance this caricature of a man who almost looks like a pig or these rabbits quietly gnawing on the foliage.

 

Copyright 2005