Interior of Sens Cathedral

Sens Cathedral was the first cathedral in France to be built in the new Gothic manner. Its choir was begun in the late 1130s, and the master mason William of Sens carried its ideas across the Channel when Canterbury Cathedral was rebuilt after a fire. By September 1874 the building was more than 700 years old, and Corot was 78. He set up among the great piers and looked down a vaulted passage towards a tall, ornate black iron gate. Stained glass high in the arches breaks into patches of red and blue. The people are only quick strokes, a woman in a shawl, a man in red holding a staff, others walking away into the dim light. Corot died in Paris the following February. The collector Jacques Zoubaloff gave the canvas to the Louvre in 1919.