The Choir Pillar Figures of Cologne Cathedral

The 14 slender, animated figures lean towards one another in richly folded, splendidly painted robes, placing them in communicative relation. Christ and Mary stand facing each other on the two easternmost columns; Peter and John follow on the columns of the apse, with the remaining ten apostles in the longitudinal choir. The four figures at the apse are wholly independent creations, successful when viewed from all sides, while the others were varied from models and individualised chiefly by their attributes – Peter with the keys, James the Greater with pilgrim's shell and staff, or Paul with the sword.

Each apostle figure has an accompanying music-making angel crowning the canopy; the angels appear simpler and more childlike than the apostles and each plays a different instrument, among them harp, fiddle, bagpipe, portative organ and psaltery. Above Christ and Mary, by contrast, rise canopies without angels. The canopy above Simon the Zealot is a special case: the stonemasons hollowed it out to create a miniature of the Church of Our Lady in Trier.

The stonemasons chose different stones for the cycle: the figures are cut from especially light tuff – saving about 280 kilograms of load per statue – while the consoles, canopies and angels are of finely workable Baumberg sandstone, and the plinth of hard Drachenfels trachyte.

The colouring was carried out with extraordinary effort: for red, the painters used lac dye from the Asian scale insect, and for the deep blue of the robes of Christ and Mary the costly lapis lazuli from Afghanistan; silver and luminous glazes heightened the effect. In total the figures wear 39 different, intricately patterned garments. The colouring visible today dates from the 1841/42 restoration and is regarded as a "veritable copy" of the medieval originals, though it appears duller than the Gothic original.

The figures are regarded as the epitome of High Gothic sculpture and the height of its mannerist phase; at the same time they stand at the beginning of a softer sculptural art that led to the Bohemian Beautiful Style. Their assessment, however, has fluctuated: in 1842 August Reichensperger praised how "the master wove their robes from fire and gold", while Sulpiz Boisserée, from a classicist viewpoint, rejected the poses as "unpleasantly exaggerated". In 1930 Georg Dehio regarded the figures as an outstanding achievement but found their idealisation "alien to nature".

More recent criticism judges them without such reservations. In 2002 Peter Kurmann called them a visual language "appropriate to the shrine-like architecture of Cologne Cathedral" and considered them the "ideal statues of the High Gothic" – in analogy to master builder Arnold Wolff's verdict that the cathedral is the "ideal Gothic cathedral".

• The ensemble with Christ and Mary at its centre was interpreted by Renate Kroos as a gathering for the Coronation of the Virgin; this is why Mary stands to Christ's right in the place of honour.
• Christ originally appears to have held a crown; it was replaced by an orb in the 19th century when the hand was renewed.
• On the console of Thomas the stonemasons set two birds pecking at grapes into the wreath of foliage.
• The protruding, waved beards – as on Andrew – are regarded as a typical feature of the Honoré style.