The Cosmic and Terrestrial Cycles on the Virgin Portal of Notre-Dame

* This article is based on a paper read at the February, 1967, meeting of the Columbia University Faculty Seminar in Medieval Studies.

Abstract

In a recent article in The Art Bulletin I presented evidence for identifying as Philip Augustus and Pope Leo III the two outermost embrasure statues on the Portal of the Coronation of the Virgin on the west Facade of Notre-Dame.¹ This present study is primarily concerned with certain enigmas and problems of interpretation involving the reliefs of the terrestrial and cosmic cycles which decorate the trumeau and the outer jambs of the two doors. Though these reliefs belong to the more general category of encyclopedic subject matter, any attempt to solve the puzzles which they pose at Notre-Dame must also, I believe, take into account the more specific relationships of these cycles to the Virgin Mary, an approach that has been largely ignored in the literature on the portal. Much of the Marian subject matter and symbolism on the doorway has of course no connection whatsoever with these cosmological series.” But it is in turn on the figure of Mary as the central theme of the portal that the ultimate significance of these cycles must depend.