DOOR

Banteay Srei's style is a mix of the archaic and the innovative. It is built largely of red sandstone, with brick and laterite used only for the enclosure walls and some structural elements. Although Banteay Srei's coloration is unique, sandstone of other shades was later to become the norm. Pediments are large in comparison to entrances, in a sweeping gabled shape. For the first time whole scenes appear on the pediments, while the lintels with central figures and kalas on looped garlands look backwards. The guardian dvarapalas and the colonettes are also old-fashioned. Decoration covering almost every available surface is deeply sculpted and figures rounded. The style is also seen in parts of Preah Vihear. Glaize wrote that, "Given the very particular charm of Banteay Srei — its remarkable state of preservation and the excellence of a near perfect ornamental technique — one should not hesitate, of all the monuments of the Angkor group, to give it the highest priority." However, he also noted that the miniature scale and elaborate decoration make the temple more of a model than a monument: "the work relates more closely to the art of the goldsmith or to carving in wood than to sculpture in stone".