Saint-Gilles-du-Gard Abbey: Detail, frieze of the central portal

Here Jesus and Peter are seated with a rooster at Peter's feet. To the side are overlapping seated figures facing the central drama. Both ornament and figure styles are Classically derived, while the composition of the frieze reflects Early Christian sarcophagi of the Arles school. The drapery of the large Apostle figures reveals a close knowledge of Roman sculpture.\u000a\u000aSaint-Gilles-du-Gard was one of the pilgrimage sites on route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Former Cluniac monastery; the present building was begun in the first half of the 11th century, when the shrine of the saint became a place of international pilgrimage. The church was consecrated by Pope Urban II in 1096. Constructed over three centuries and never completed, it consists of a large crypt or lower church surmounted by an equally large upper church. The earliest work is in the crypt; the latest, dating from the early 13th century, is in the unfinished east end of the upper church. The sculpted fa\u00E7ade, executed in white marble and limestone, is also unfinished. Some scholars have proposed an early 12th-century date for the fa\u00E7ade sculpture, seeing Saint-Gilles as the first step in an artistic renaissance that was to lead directly to the development of Early Gothic sculpture at Chartres. A recent compromise opinion is that most of the fa\u00E7ade sculpture dates from the mid-12th century.