ABSTRACT
The instance, in 1942 Rita MollerRacke who referred also to Marot wrote that the sculpture depicts Count Gerard of Vaudemont "who died in 1108 on a crusade" (sic) and his spouse; because of the sculpture's "stiffness and cubical hardening" she regarded it as a work of the later twelfth century. Schmoll points out that the gesture of embracing is noteworthy: "The couple constitutes a single block, the expression is elementary, the movement rigid." He too considers the sculpture a work of the late twelfth century. Another couple appears on a corbel of the church of St Sulpice in Montils, where the busts of a man with a cross above his head and a woman wearing an elaborate headdress are presented frontally. While the returning crusader is presented as the solemn image of a nobleman, his wife is depicted as the personification of fidelity and humility.
