Stained Glass, Amiens Cathedrale

Now on our way back to the UK after my short meeting in Orléans, we stopped off the autoroute slog to have a look at Amiens.

The huge cathedral is well known, yet despite countless times passing through Amiens by rail, or nearby by road, we had never visited it. We partially remedied this failure today.

Much of the fine stained glass (including 13th Century masterpieces) were lost in each of the World Wars, but some remains. Here is my attempt to photograph one of the Rose Windows. It always seems difficult to get a decent shot, but today worked reasonably well: the sun was shining through the window, and I underexposed the shot slightly with an exposure compensation setting of minus 1.3.

I've found this nice web site with better pictures of the glass.

The cathedral is magnificent inside and out. Here you may see the powerful structure.

And this picture shows us the organ, as well as giving an impression of the airiness and scale of the place.

The Choir Stalls have some wonderful "poppyheads" seen here. And here is another similar photograph. The misericords ubder the seats were quite fantastic, literally so, with biblical and other scenes, not always easily interpreted. Better by far than my own photograohs is this exhaustive and useful listing.

The exterior carvings are reamrakable, as well. Here is .the West Door, while here we have my attempt at securing some detail of the carving.

All around the West Door are scattered mysterious, but intriguing, beautifully sculptured reliefs, such as this one, apparently of a hedgehog, and this one, most assuredly of a Beezle, with a (real) feather sticking out of its ear!

... and so back to the coast, home, and (ordinary) work!