As you tour through the many cathedrals in Europe, it is easy to start taking for granted all the statues and carvings. But if you start to study them individually and identify who they are and possibly who created them, they start to take on greater value and personalities of their own.
Mounted on the clustered shafts that separate the great windows in La Saint-Chapelle are twelve larger than life-sized sculpted stone figures representing the twelve Apostles. Six of these are replicas, but you wouldn’t know it unless you looked very closely. The damaged originals are now in the Musée du Moyen Age, also in Paris. Each Apostle carries a disk marked with the consecration crosses that were traditionally marked on the pillars of a church at its consecration.
These Apostles are just a small piece of what makes this chapel and others like it so special. Taking the photos and researching about them afterward has been a lot of fun, but if you have a chance to research the locations before you go, you will appreciate your visit so much more.
