A smiling female figure between the legs of a gargoyle

When Joseph Breck mentioned the present piece in his 1926 Brief Guide to The Met Cloisters, he described it as ‘a fragment of a gargoyle said to have come from Notre-Dame at Paris’ (Breck, loc. cit.). Serving both a decorative and functional purpose, fantastical carvings of gargoyles and grotesques have become synonymous with Paris’ famed cathedral. Notre-Dame’s extensive sculptural programmes were regularly refreshed from the Middle Ages onwards during successive building and restoration campaigns. In the 19th century in particular, under the direction of Viollet-le-Duc, a number of medieval gargoyles were removed, with some salvaged by private collectors. Whilst it is not possible to confirm Breck’s suggestion for certain, the stylistic features of the present lot are consistent with the surviving mid-thirteenth-century sculptural decorations of Notre-Dame.

Depicted between the gargoyle’s legs is a delicately carved woman, her hands resting on the creature’s knees. Because the gargoyle would originally have projected outward as a waterspout, the figure would have been positioned to look straight down toward the street. The woman’s close-fitting head covering, complete with a fillet and barbette (a circular band or crown-like piece worn on top of the head and the band of fabric that goes under the chin, respectively), is characteristic of mid-thirteenth-century fashion. Similar headwear can be seen on the female figure in a surviving fragment from Notre-Dame’s Last Judgement portal from circa 1220, formerly on the western façade and today housed at the Cluny Museum, Paris (see Cohen and Dectot, op. cit., pp. 88, fig. 126).