Tomorrow we’ll be publishing an article on the restoration of the interior of Notre-Dame de Paris, which we’ve finally been able to discover (hint: it’s superb), but we’d like to return here to the issue of the stained glass windows in the south aisle and the chapels.
Some people, notably the diocese, claim that since the mural paintings based on Viollet-le-Duc’s painted decorations that once adorned these chapels have disappeared, the stained glass windows are no longer justified and can therefore be removed.
This is tantamount to glorying in one’s own turpitude, that of the clergy and the Ministry of Culture at the time, which allowed these decorations to be destroyed, even though they were classified as historic monuments. It would also mean going even further and wiping out all traces of Viollet-le-Duc’s work in these chapels, even though, let’s not forget, they are theoretically protected along with the rest of the cathedral.
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- 1. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879)
Painted cartoon of the Chapelle de la Saint-Enfance (detail)
Charenton-le-Pont, Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie
Photo: Mathilde Candau - See the image in its page
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- 2. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879)
Painted cartoon of the Chapelle Sainte-Anne (detail)
Charenton-le-Pont, Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie
Photo: Mathilde Candau - See the image in its page
Instead, we would like to propose another solution, in fact the only reasonable one, which would logically accompany the very fine restoration work that is nearing completion. The gradual elimination of Viollet-le-Duc from the cathedral, which began in the 1950s, is not inevitable, and is even perfectly reversible. We have already mentioned the crown of lights, the chandeliers in the nave and the choir fence (see article), which could all be put back in place. But we could go even further in restoring the cathedral to the state it was in when it was classified as a historic monument. Certainly not by removing the stained glass windows, but on the contrary by restoring the wall paintings that complemented them so magnificently. In fact, you only have to look at the chapels in the ambulatory, which have preserved both their stained glass windows and their murals, to understand how much the vandalism of the early 1960s detracted from the beauty of the building.
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- 3. Engraving of the decorations by Viollet-le-Duc of the chapelle Sainte-Geneviève at Notre-Dame
Charenton-le-Pont, Médiathèque du
Patrimoine et de la Photographie - See the image in its page
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- 4. Engraving of the decorations by Viollet-le-Duc of the chapelle Saint-Joseph at Notre-Dame
Charenton-le-Pont, Médiathèque du
Patrimoine et de la Photographie - See the image in its page
If the murals in the nave had been figurative, it would have been more complicated. But luckily, they were mostly decorative. The fact that the Viollet-le-Duc archives at the Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie in Charenton contain all the preparatory drawings and cartoons for these decorations (ill. 1 and 2), engravings (ill. 3 and 4) and even photographs of some of them taken before they were removed (ill. 5) makes it all the easier to redo them. These lost painted motifs, many of which are almost Art Nouveau in style, testifying to the genius of the architect who was an important source of inspiration for designers at the very end of the century, could be restored in exactly the same way as the spire. This would restore these chapels to the beauty of their last known historical state, the one we have seen since the 1960s being merely the object of official vandalism.
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- 5. Photographs of the Saint-Charles chapel
Left: west side wall, with the confessional
Right: east side wall, with the altar
Charenton-le-Pont, Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie
Photo: J. Gourbeix/RMN-GP - See the image in its page
It should be added that this commission to Viollet-le-Duc is all the better documented since an excellent thesis by Mathilde Candau from the École du Louvre was carried out on the subject. Entitled « Un chantier oublié à Notre-Dame de Paris : Le décapage des peintures murales de Viollet-le-Duc (chapelles de la nef et bras du transept) » ("A forgotten project at Notre-Dame de Paris: Stripping Viollet-le-Duc’s wall paintings (nave chapels and transept arms)"), it looks both at what we know about this decoration and at its unfortunate disappearance [1].
It also confirms that, contrary to what some people claim, the decoration of the chapels, both the wall paintings and the stained glass windows, was carefully thought out by the architect and that the stained glass windows (ill. 5) were not decorative because of a "lack of money", as is sometimes claimed. On the contrary, everything was carefully thought out by the architect, who wanted to create a total work of art. The stained glass windows were designed to illuminate the nave according to the light shining through them. The north side, for example, was treated differently: "a darker and colder light than the chapels of the southern aisle, which are flooded with a ’brighter and more colourful’ light"", but also in relation to the colours of the walls so that "’the coloured daylight of the stained glass windows’ harmonises with the future colours of the walls and complements each other".
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- 6. Stained glass windows in the chapelle Saint-Geneviève after restoration
(the photo was taken at dusk, and does not fully do
the beauty of the work)
Photo: La Tribune de l’Art - See the image in its page
"Everything is designed to create an overall unity that is pleasing to the eye and harmonious." writes Mathilde Candau. This unity, already compromised by the removal of the wall paintings, would be definitively ruined by the removal of the stained glass windows, especially as they would clash with those in the north aisle. On the other hand, it could be perfectly re-established if the decorations were restored, which, let us repeat, would be extremely simple to do.
The public’s discovery of the restored stained glass windows, still in place and even more beautiful than we remember, will undoubtedly play a role in their preservation. We have no doubt that the disastrous project to replace them will eventually be abandoned, either voluntarily in the face of opposition (and the weakness of the projects), or thanks to legal action. But we need to go even further. Notre-Dame needs to be reviollet-le-ducised and its painted decorations restored [2].