The Case for Studying Foliage: Notre-Dame of Amiens and Beyond

For past generations of architectural historians, sculpted foliage in medieval buildings served to date construction campaigns or place a monument within a particular style or movement. What followed was a preliminary stage of classification of foliate forms which familiarized this type of sculpture to art historians but left many questions unanswered. For example, Notre-Dame of Amiens contains many important examples of sculpted foliage, the range of which reflects the ability of sculptors to choose between many modes of representation. Foliage not only acts as a transitional border between sculpture and architecture, but also performs a moral function in narrative scenes on the western façade. Examining the way in which sculptors used foliage to convey meaning reveals leaves, vines, and fruits to be anything but neutral or frivolous; rather, the way in which foliage was sculpted reflects contemporary natural philosophy and the place of the natural world in sacred space. The most impressive specimen at Amiens, the sculpted foliate frieze that runs along the entirety of the interior, tells a story of innovation and experimentation. Analyzing this frieze in its entirety clarifies the sculptors’ process as they attempted to make the stones come alive, somewhat at odds with theses about serialization and standardization in the early stages of the cathedral’s construction. Using Amiens as a starting point, this paper will reflect on the utility of studying foliate decoration and its relevance to questions of production and meaning in medieval architecture.