Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, Paris, France

The Plate Traceried Rose Medallion and Trefoil Spandrel Relief of the Western Façade at Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris

2157

Gothic Revival / Neo-Gothic (1843–1864, after High Gothic idioms of c. 1225–1250)

An architectural stone wall-relief and window-surround fragment on the upper western facade of Notre-Dame, featuring a central radiating eight-lobed plate-tracery rose roundel with flanking trefoil spandrels adorned with ball-flower buds. Plate tracery achieves its geometry through subtraction from solid stone rather than construction from assembled bars — the same pattern arrived at by the opposite procedure from Gothic window tracery, a formal coincidence the ornament quietly demonstrates.