Figures and monsters

On each side of the capital a naked figure stands at the centre with its feet resting on a cable-shaped annulet, and arms stretched upwards to hold the wings of the monsters by which it is flanked. Forming large diagonals that stretch up to the corner volutes, these monsters originally possessed, presumably, an eagle head (now destroyed); their winged bodies are those of a bird but they terminate in a serpent’s tail, which is curled round each of the legs of the naked figure at the centre and is then interlaced with the tail of another similar monster to form a kind of tendril motif on which the beasts rest their clawed feet. The gracefulness of the naked bodies and the undulations of the serpent tails lend this sculpture an elegance which survives despite the damage that the capital has suffered and the loss of all the heads.
The top of the impost block is decorated with overlapping circles, delicately scored with vertical or diagonal incisions. In the impost frieze the tendrils form circular medallions and envelop the bevelled sides; they begin (or end) on the west side with interlaced bird-headed snakes, whose beaks each grasp a tendril shoot. Various flowers are placed in the medallions: four- or eight-leafed, round or pointed, single or double, they testify to the inexhaustible inventiveness and innovative power of the artist.
The long-necked birds’ heads that are interlaced on the narrower sides of the impost are comparable to the symmetrical undulations of the monsters on this capital. As elsewhere, these stylistic links between impost and capital seem to prove that both are attributable to the same sculptor.

serpent's-tail monster figure