Chimeras and Pelican on Notre-Dame de Paris

A sepia-toned photograph features three prominent stone sculptures positioned on a Gothic balustrade. To the left, two seated chimera figures—one bear-like and one avian-featured—stare downward, while to the right, a sculpture of a pelican feeds her young, an iconographic representation of 'the pelican in her piety.' The foreground is framed by sharp, metallic foliage ornamentation, and in the soft-focus distance, the architecture of 19th-century Paris is discernible.

The inclusion of the pelican in her piety links this architectural program to medieval Christian bestiaries, where the bird represents Christ's self-sacrifice, while the chimeras reflect the 19th-century Gothic Revival interest in the grotesque and the uncanny as popularized by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc's restorations.