The "Headmaster" of Chartres and the Origins of "Gothic" Sculpture

Despite the aesthetic and historical significance of the Royal Portal, scholars lack concrete knowledge about it since no documentation of its design and construction exists. Nevertheless, over the last century, a set of truths about the facade has become accepted. Employing a new methodology that overcomes the lack of documents with a revised form of connoisseurship, Edson Armi proposes a radically different biography of the headmaster that has far-reaching implications for the study of Gothic sculpture. With a new perspective on this, the most important mid-twelfth-century portal, the book concludes that the style and cultural context of Ile-de-France sculpture is less defined and more diverse than previously imagined. More important, the book argues that the forms of art, as well as the design and working procedures in the Paris basin, can no longer be seen as unique or separate from the practices of provincial French art in the period before 1140.

C. Edson Armi is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.