Le remploi de portails sculptés dans les monuments de la France gothique

The re-use of sculptured portals is by no means marginal or trivial phenomenon. It concerns several major ecclesiastical buildings of the Gothic period. This article especially considers the concrete condition of former realizations, and the true significance of it. All five selected examples (abbey churches of St. Denis and St. Bénigne, Dijon; Bourges, Laon and Paris cathedrals) involve a project of renewal of early medieval, or Romanesque, fabric. The main objective of the investigation is to show that, during the 12^th century, the progress of sculpture evidently anticipated the one of the architecture. Also, it reveals that the re-use of some half-a-century (or little more) “aged” portals was at that time not perceived as inconvenient by patrons and master builders. On the contrary, the message delivered by the iconographic program in this way seems to have been rather valuated.