Gargoyles, Chimeres, and the Grotesque in French Gothic Sculpture

Good books about gargoyles aren’t easy to find but this one, edited by Lester Burbank Bridaham, is better than many I’ve seen. Gargoyles, Chimeres, and the Grotesque in French Gothic Sculpture was published in 1930, and is mostly a collection of photographs, with the text kept to a minimum at the front of the book. The nature of the subject—eroded soot-stained sculptures seen against eroded soot-stained walls—doesn’t always help the photographer but the book makes up in quantity what it lacks in quality. There are many photographs here, often four to a page over 200 pages. Dover reprinted the book in a large-format edition in 2006. These gargoyles and grotesques show very plainly the complete freedom under which the old craftsmen worked and the immense originality and variety that were the result. Here are hundreds of spontaneous creations, each as individual as possible, and not only this but many of them show a brilliancy of space composition and a fineness of line that would not…