2016-04-17 Villers-Saint-Paul, église Saint-Pierre et Saint-Paul, Oise, Picardy

The side elevations are far from presenting a rustic Romanesque nave of small rural churches of the same era. They are also in a state of preservation quite remarkable, and the carved decoration has not suffered erosion as was the case in parts of the western portal. Tall windows, half blocked by the roofs of the aisles embellished, are surrounded by a succession of molding good effect, and are topped by a cord of violet flowers (not to be confused with the tip-de- diamond) which continues on the walls at the transom. Subdivides a single buttress wall at its center, and the city also includes cord that buttress. But it's the top ledge of the wall that represents the single most singular of the side walls, and it has no equal in Beauvais. It is formed by regularly spaced twenty-nine corbels, which show not only the usual grimacing and monstrous heads, but the heads of animals, sometimes two heads at once, small figures and geometric designs. The space between two corbels is also occupied by low-relief decorations, which are here less conventional than the brackets: one notes, among other things, a snake with a head, a siren, two birds with human heads , a kind of prehistoric horse spitting fire, two cows facing, a character reminiscent of a totem, two people whose bodies and limbs intertwine, a man, a kind of fantastic bat, a stringed instrument, lily flowers, a lion-headed man ... the aisles have a different cornice, also punctuated by corbels, mostly carved masks. This ledge is identified by Dominique Vermand as a precursor to beauvaisine ledge, which then experiencing strong diffusion in the Beauvais and the French Vexin, which is maintained during the early Gothic period and knows his latest applications in the region in 1200, but continues to exist in Normandy. Modillions therefore support small semicircular arcades, in which enroll two smaller arches. The relief is still very strong here, and successively reduced to only two to three centimeters in the following decades. WP