northOtre-Dame de Paris sees the light at the end of a pharaonic project, with a reopening announced on December 7 and 8. The remaining path promises to be elegant for the cathedral, which is quite logical when we have received 840 million euros in donations; It’s almost too much. Except that if the controversies have died down one after another, one remains, as France likes: should contemporary stained glass windows be installed in six of the seven south aisle chapels?
Emmanuel Macron wants it, who made the reconstruction of the cathedral a personal matter. The President of the Republic has been dreaming for a long time of a “architectural gesture” – a titanium spire, a concrete structure, a fluorescent or green roof… He had to decide on a reconstruction in “the same”. It lacks brilliance, but it is easier to meet the five-year deadline it imposed to welcome the fifteen million visitors announced each year as soon as possible.
Notre-Dame’s contemporary gesture is now reduced to the important order for 180 square meters of stained glass, the winner of which, an artist associated with a master glassmaker, will be chosen in November. The decision belongs to the owner State, that is, to Mr. Macron. This “act of the prince” must be qualified, the Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, and the Church in general desiring with the same ardour this contemporary intrusion into the walls of the 12th century.my century.
But now the proud team between State and Church is seriously shaken. Whatever one may say, this conflict is in no way a battle between ancients and moderns. No one outside a few “ultra-traditional” circles is offended by the 104 stained glass windows, in black and white, designed in 1994 by Pierre Soulages in the abbey church of Sainte-Foy in Conques (Aveyron). Let us admit a weakness for those, in red and lead, made in 1997 by Aurélie Nemours in the priory of Salagon, in the Alpes de Haute Provence. We could cite dozens of others, equally respectable. It would also be stupid to adopt a principled rule at Notre-Dame, where 92% of the stained glass windows already date back to the 17th century.myXIXmy and XXmy ages.
Common sense arguments
The problem with this cathedral is that the six coveted chapels are already occupied. Its author, Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), is not just anyone and piloted in the 19th century.my century, the renovation of the entire building. As a bonus, she added simple, geometric, colorful stained glass. This neutrality does not fit well with an architect with strong neo-Gothic interventions. It was enough for the craftsmen on the art commission to say that Viollet-le-Duc did not create a work with an abstract chessboard suitable for replacement.
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