Gislebertus

Gislebertus ( 12th century ) was a sculptor whose approximately derived from the years 1120 to 1135 decoration of the Cathedral of Saint- Lazare in Autun, Burgundy, France, posing on numerous portals, tympana and capitals the most original works of that period.

His sculptures are expressive and imaginative: from the terrifying Last Judgment ( Westtympanon ) with his demons representations and strikingly elongated figures, to the Eve (North Portal), the first major female nude in European art since antiquity and a model of supple grace. His influence on other French sacral sculpture can be seen and its technology paved the way for the Gothic style.

The name Gislebertus comes from a cut in stone " signature" in Westtympanon the Cathedral of Autun: ' Gislebertus hoc fecit ' or ' Gislebertus has done this .' Some modern scholars believe this is more for the name of the founder, as for the artist.

His style characterizes the Burgundian Romanesque, we again met in the sculptures of the Basilica of Ste -Marie -Madeleine in Vezelay.

The lying Eva

Near the Cathedral of Autun is the Musée Rolin, which among other the resulting fragments of the former North Portales (destroyed in the course of modernization of the choir in the 18th century) of the cathedral are shown, including the lintel the " lying Eva " of 1130 /40, one of the most famous examples of Burgundian sculpture and one of the most unusual representations of women of the middle Ages. Master Gislebertus has created this portal only a few years before the West Portal and has achieved an extraordinary sensuality of the 12th century in this female figure. Shown here is the scene in which Eva by the hand held before Adam whispers that message whose compliance has the people expelled from paradise.

These lying position of Eve has been a new invention. To her right was hidden in the foliage of the devil; his claw with sharp claws can still be seen. The other figure of Adam is lost, however.

This figure is sensual and seductive like no other in Romanesque art. Based only on the right elbow and the knee, Eva moves like the snake itself through the garden of Eden. Your view has it directed to Adam, whom she whispers with the set for horn to his mouth right hand, to do what she has done while she reaches with the left back to pick the apple, the branch her ​​from the claw hand of the seducer is bent against. The presence of female nudity by the anatomically exaggerated rotation of the upper body is increased to the viewer.

The unprecedented and therefore enigmatic attitude of these lying Eva becomes clear if one takes into account the contemporary significance of this attitude into consideration. For the penitential liturgy demanded that the penitents, based on knee and elbow, sprawled lying on the ground. The sculptor has the expected penance in the process of seduction involved were, but it is a questionable link that appears Bußhaltung but even as a snake movement, which finds its culmination in the seductive whisper and in the view of Adam.