Quickly after the 2019 hearth at Notre-Dame, President Emmanuel Macron pledged to “construct an much more stunning cathedral”, asserting a world competitors for the design of a brand new spire. The outcry was so nice that the president was pressured to drop his grand ambitions, and pledge that the spire could be rebuilt because it was earlier than the blaze.
The 96m-high construction was designed within the Nineteenth century by Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, to exchange a decrease bell tower broken and dismantled within the 1780s. Macron claimed he had been satisfied by the consultants, however he additionally realised {that a} new spire would delay the reconstruction, which he promised could be accomplished in 5 years.
4 days earlier than the president’s announcement, the Nationwide Heritage and Structure Fee had unanimously accepted a 3,000-page plan to rebuild the monument in response to Viollet-le-Duc’s plans, utilizing historic supplies corresponding to oak for the framework and lead for the roofing. The president subsequently expressed the hope that “a up to date architectural gesture” may discover its place within the grounds surrounding the cathedral. However this additionally fell on deaf ears. The realm belongs to the town of Paris and it selected to depart the sq. in entrance of the cathedral empty.
5 years later, Macron tried once more to make his mark on the rebuilding of the monument. This time, towards the unanimous verdict of the identical Nationwide Heritage Fee, he ordered the elimination of the stained-glass home windows designed by Viollet-le-Duc from six of the chapels and commissioned fashionable creations to exchange them. Heritage associations, students and designers protested towards this fait du prince, which violated the ideas of the 1964 Venice Constitution. A petition to maintain Viollet-le-Duc’s home windows in place has drawn 234,000 signatures. As the federal government has determined to maneuver forward, heritage teams have pledged to take the problem to courtroom.
The principle beneficiary of this quarrel between the ancients and the moderns is Viollet-le-Duc, whose work has been thrust into the highlight. Many who believed Notre-Dame’s spire, or its spectacular gargoyles and griffins had been inherited from the Center Ages now know his identify. Among the many Nineteenth-century architects dedicated to saving France’s monuments, Viollet-le-Duc is essentially the most distinguished, if solely as a result of he laid down, in voluminous prose, the idea of what was often called the “neo-Gothic” motion (a label he was a lot against).
Viollet-le-Duc left greater than 100 books, notably the ten-volume Dictionary of French Structure from the eleventh to the sixteenth century together with 3,700 drawings, which types the richest iconographic lexicon on the Center Ages. “The significance of his writings attracted unconditional admirers, but in addition vindictive adversaries who made him the scapegoat of an imaginary Gothic celebration,” writes Françoise Bercé in her monograph on the artist.
The artist Auguste Rodin was amongst those that accused Viollet-le-Duc of destroying Notre-Dame together with his fantasies. In 1914, a newspaper claimed that, guided by a “fury of logic” to reconstitute the previous, Viollet-le-Duc “delivered a cathedral which had by no means existed, at any time”.
His rehabilitation began amongst a restricted circle of students within the Sixties and was cemented by an exhibition curated by Bruno Foucart in 1979 for the centenary of his demise, adopted by the republication of his texts.
“Liberated from Victor Hugo’s romanticism, his imaginative and prescient of an artwork complete, supported by a rigorous commentary of the Center Age, is best understood. He was in spite of everything a precursor of the trendy model,” says the artwork historian Thierry Crépin-Leblond, who has simply revealed a ebook on Notre-Dame.
“By way of this final restoration, Viollet-le-Duc has been recognised as the brand new founding father of the cathedral that he had dramatically reshaped. In line with the foundations of conservation, his heritage have to be revered as a result of he’s undoubtedly a part of the monument’s historical past,” says the architect and former head of Unesco’s cultural division Francesco Bandarin. However Bandarin can also be amongst those that fears the pendulum might have swung too far. He wonders “why the thought of asking dwelling artists to resume the home windows triggers such a violent response”.
The structure historian Alexandre Gady, additionally an writer of a ebook on the cathedral, warns that such a purist response can result in incorrect decisions. He regrets the reconstruction of “such a heavy spire, which turned a mega-chimney in 2019, and the usage of supplies corresponding to wooden and lead, that are so harmful in instances of fireplace”. He questions why the framework, “which is invisible”, was not rebuilt with a contemporary design and safer supplies, as somewhere else corresponding to Reims or Nantes.
Within the phrases of Bercé, Viollet-le-Duc—as soon as vilified, then glorified—has now “develop into untouchable”. There’s a value to pay for this: a threat of an absolute safety of Nineteenth-century cultural heritage, despite the fact that the supplies used, and the model of the age, had been typically mediocre.
