Birds and wild animals

A bird with outspread wings is placed frontally on each side of the capital. Both the heads and the legs have been destroyed, but the talons that clutch the tripartite annulet are still recognizable. The wings are fully outspread; their extremities are grasped on both sides by the claws of rampant lions. The lion heads that presumably nestled closely together in the corners below the volutes have also been destroyed, yet the animals can clearly be recognized as lions on the basis of their in part still surviving manes and the position of their tails. This motif can be regarded as the transposition of the theme already explored in capital W10MS66 with naked figures and monsters, but this time in a purely animal representation: a kind of “hellish nature” is once again developed.
The impost block is decorated with a fish-scale pattern five-leaf palmettes, enclosed in heart-shaped compartments held together by knotted tendrils with curling terminations. Once again a model was taken over from Saint-Sernin at Toulouse.

palmette Lion bird Saint-Sernin Toulouse