He lived in an age when artists were beginning to make names for
themselves. The master-mason Hugues Libergier, whose funerary
slab may be seen today in the cathedral of Reims, was his
contemporary. Robert de Luzarches and Thomas de Cormont, the
masters of the work at Amiens, were his collaborators. The
century before, one who plied his trade chiseled Gislebertus hoc
fecit into the tympanum above the central portal of Autun. Yet
of the sculptor of the Beau Dieu, a work that John Ruskin
considered “one of the noblest pieces of Christian sculpture in
the world,” we know nothing at all. The Beau Dieu (literally
“handsome God”) is the image of Christ that occupies the top
half of the pillar dividing the central portal to Notre-Dame of
Amiens. He stands atop an image of Solomon, is flanked by the
apostles, and is crowned by a magnificent tableau of the Last
Judgment in the tympanum above his head. As a look at the whole
west front of the cathedral shows, the image of Christ makes an
impressive focal point as the b