THE EARLY AND CLASSIC GOTHIC STYLE C. HSQ-C. 125O
Of St. Denis we possess only the choir and, very restored, the west
front. This is of the two-tower type of Caen which became now
de rigueur for North French cathedrals, but, against Caen, enriched
by a still round-headed triple portal* Chartres followed St.
Denis at once. Of the cathedral of about 1145 only the west portals
remain, gloriously vigorous, alert and human in their sculpture, as
against the rest of France. We can guess what the naves of St. Denis
and Chartres were like from the cathedrals of Sens and especially
Noyon. At Noyon, the walls are enriched, as against the Norman
system of arcade, gallery and clerestory, by a low wall-passage or tri-
forium between gallery and clerestory. This division of the wall into
four zones instead of three does away with much that had remained
inert before. The arcades have alternating supports, composite piers
as major and round ones as minor divisions. In accordance with this
the vaults are sex-partite as they had been in some Norman and
Romanesque churches. That means that between two transverse
arches ribs run across diagonally from composite to composite pier,
while the shafts on the round piers are followed up by subsidiary
ribs parallel with the transverse arches and meeting the diagonal ribs
in the centre of the whol$ bay. The effect again is more lively than
we know in the Romanesque style (fig. 25).
However, the architects of the two immediately following cathe-
drals must have felt that in the walls, piers and vaults of Noyon there
was still too much left of Romanesque weight and stability. The
alternating supports and sex-partite vaults especially produced square,
that is static, bays. So at Laon (pL xxv and fig. 26), after some
experimenting with alternating supports, all the piers are circular,
although on the upper floors an alternating between groups of five
and of three thin shafts rising from the circular piers is still preserved,
and there are still sex-partite vaults. The many thin shaft-rings, or
annulets, round the shafts also still emphasise the horizontal. All the
same, in walking along the nave the halting at every major support
is avoided. That was a decisive step to take. Notre Dame in Paris goes
yet one step farther (pi. xxvi and fig. 27). The shafts on the circular
piers are no longer differentiated, and the shaft-rings are left out. But
the wall was still, it seems, originally in four stages, with gallery and
then, instead of the triforium, a row of circular windows below those
of the clerestory. However, the proportions have now changed
sufficiently to show wliat tendency lay behind these gradual modi-
fications. The gallery arcades have coupled openings in the choir—
40