An anonymous French medieval sculptor made this carving of a scholar or scribe seated at a desk somewhere in the middle of the 12th century. It’s one small part of the decorative embellishments to the west doorway of Chartres Cathedral in Northern France. My mother sent me a postcard of it (pictured here) as a source of inspiration when I was taking my A levels back in the early 1980s and I’ve treasured it ever since.
The figure has traditionally been identified as Aristotle. With his lined face and furrowed brow, full beard and lips, and his downcast eyes he is the epitome of scholarly concentration. But his efforts are not agonised; they seem to be bringing comfort, quiet enjoyment, a focussed fulfilment of the mind. He is seated on a cushion with a portable desk on his knees, with a neat holder for his pot of ink. I think he may have been holding a pen or quill in his stubby fingers which has become detached; there is a neat rack of them above him to the right, with what looks very like a golf ball (though it must be something else). And although the forms of these Chartres portal sculptures are generally very stylised I am very tempted to think this face was modelled on someone the sculptor knew. It has the individual quality of a portrait; indeed his features are not unlike those of Mr Hammond, my English teacher, who was himself a scholar though he dressed differently and used a biro.
The monks who were based at this time at Chartres, Bernard of Chartres for example, are renowned for their efforts to reconcile the ideas found in recently discovered works by the Greek philosopher Aristotle with those of Christian theology, an enterprise that would be fulfilled more completely in the following century by Thomas Aquinas. It was Bernard of Chartres, by the way, who coined the phrase ‘we are carried on the shoulders of giants’, one that has been repeated and modified by generations of writers and thinkers ever since.
