A frieze section decorated with a striding lion

We fell in love with this chirpy little lion as soon as we laid eyes on him. More domestic feline companion than ferocious king of the plains, he struts across this diminutive frieze section with the poise and panache of a model. He was carved in Southern France in the second quarter of the twelfth century, a period in which many of the region's greatest Romanesque churches were being built. Originally, he would have served as part of a long, running chain of decoration that enveloped the walls of the building at a level above head height. This helps to explain why he was carved with such flattened foreshortening, which would have allowed him to peer down at the medieval viewer as he teetered along the relief's shallow lower sill.