The cathedral motif could easily have disappeared amidst the excitement of the Avant-Garde movement, replaced by more modern subjects such as machines, metal constructions and speed. But this was not the case. The major influence of Monet's series of paintings could be seen for a long time, for example in the work of Maximilien Luce and Albert Marquet, who produced many works portraying Notre Dame de Paris from a single viewpoint.
The 1898 publication of Emile Mâle's L’art religieux du xiiie siècle en France (Religious Art in France in the 13th Century) made its mark on the young critics who emerged at the same time as Cubism; Apollinaire argued that modern artists had gone beyond the interlude offered by the Italian Renaissance and returned to an original and authentically French form of art, namely Gothic art. Robert Delaunay illustrated this relationship: in his description of the chancel of Saint-Séverin Church, the intricate Gothic arches, with their severe, dynamic forms, are used to describe a complex, almost abstract space.
