Sculpted faces on the Entrance Facade

The palace's wide Entrance Facade and its richly sculpted decoration indicate the importance of the master of the house, the Prince-Bishop Cardinal Armand Gaston de Rohan.
A continuous row of sculpted faces lines the apexes of all the ground floor arcades. They depict sixteen Old Testament prophets and prophetesses and are the work of the sculptor Robert Le Lorrain. Their identification is uncertain, since Le Lorrain gave precedence to the figures' psychological expressions rather than their traditional attributes. Moses and his brother Aaron, on either side of the entrance gate, are recognisable by the horns of the former and the cap worn by the latter, not unlike a tiara.
Thus arranged on the ground floor of the facade, the sculpted heads of the Old Testament prophets symbolise the rock on which the Catholic Church, itself from the New Testament, is built. The large statuary groups surmounting the portal depict Religion on the left and Clemency on the right.