Aulnay - Elephant Capital

That elephants should be represented on a Romanesque capital is not surprising when one considers the role these noble beasts played in tales from Roman and Biblical history with which everyone would be familiar; as Noah surely brought elephants onto the ark, their place within the church is assured. What is more interesting here is the question of design. Although realistic for the most part, these creatures were not drawn from life, as their bovine hindquarters and multiple toes attest. Rather, they must derive from sketchbooks which circulated, as did the master masons and sculptors themselves, from site to site. Such sharing of talent and images, though not the whole story, suffices to explain the repetition of nearly identical motifs across wide geographical areas, particularly in the case of non-religious subjects.

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