France Guide
Burgundy
The Cathédrale St-Lazare
Autun's great twelfth-century Cathédrale St-Lazare was built nearly a thousand years after the Romans had gone and stands in the highest and best-fortified corner of the town. Its greatest claim to artistic fame lies in its sculptures, the work of Gislebertus, generally accepted as one of the most outstanding Romanesque sculptors.
The tympanum of the Last Judgement above the west door bears his signature – Gislebertus hoc fecit ("Gislebertus made this") – beneath the feet of Christ. To his left are depicted the Virgin Mary, the saints and the apostles, with the saved rejoicing below them; to the right the Archangel Michael disputes souls with Satan, who tries to cheat by leaning on the scales, while the damned despair beneath. During the eighteenth century the local clergy decided the tympanum was an inferior work and plastered it over, saving it from almost certain destruction during the Revolution. The head of Christ, however, had been hacked off, and was only rediscovered – hiding anonymously in the collection of the Musée Rolin – in 1948.
The interior of the cathedral, whose pilasters and arcading were modelled on the Roman architecture of the city's gates, was also decorated by Gislebertus, who carved most of the capitals himself. Conveniently for anyone wanting a close look, some of the finest are now exhibited in the old chapter library, up the stairs on the right of the choir, among them a beautiful Flight into Egypt and Adoration of the Magi.