Landmark Exhibition

 Brugge flower market, Wednesdays.

I had assumed that there would be no market of any size this morning, as happened during the first two weeks of January when there were three stalls only. But I had not appreciated that the May 1^st holiday, Labour Day, is Big in Europe though hardly noticed in the U.K. En route to coffee with the girls and later, buying a hot chicken on the market on the way home, I loved the carnival atmosphere; a band, a procession, more crowds than normal and with an excess of great holiday humour abounding. Plant and flower stalls in profusion plus the usual cheeses, hams, bread and cakes, fruit and vegetables for sale. This is quite my favourite market but this morning did seem special with the light-hearted atmosphere and the larger-than-normal crowds. Lots of Socialist red about, too!!

Mah Jong on the terrace last summer!

 St Francis, praying by Francisco de Zubaran
1660-70

My energy

 remains stubbornly restricted though better than it was in March. I tend to go somewhere or do something in the morning when the energy is relatively high. Thus Mah Jong here with the girls on Thursday [quite a favourite activity] and a wander down to Oud St Jan to see the exhibition of Spanish Baroque in Sint Janshospitaal on Friday morning. The artists on exhibit from Spain's Golden Century are Pedro de Mena; Bartholome Esteban Murillo and Francisco de Zubaran.  As I entered, I bumped into a friend who knows lots about the period of the exhibition and his explanations and comments were so useful and illuminating. The Spanish Baroque is frankly, too Catholic for me but several paintings and sculptures were brilliant in their execution. I loved a Mater Dolorosa by Murillo, far more affecting, haunting and aesthetically pleasing than several others with the same subject by different artists. The Murillo has a mysterious, ethereal quality which strongly appealed to this non-believer. But my absolute favourite was a Zubaran of St Francis praying, with an interesting and arresting composition; the central oblique figure dominating the canvas and the most unbelievable artistry in the realisation of his robes. Apparently, realism was all in the Spanish Baroque and the repairs and imperfections in the close-up of St Francis’s tunic were breath-takingly skilful and yes, stunningly realistic.

 Mater Dolorosa
Bartholome Esteban Murillo

The exhibition features 22 works of art including six of Pedro de Mena’s hyper-realistic sculptures; all is arranged to follow the chronology of the story of Christ to give a narrative to the experience. Works like those of De Mena, often commissioned for churches and convents in the seventeenth century, were carried in processions during the Counter-Reformation through city streets to offer protection to the inhabitants from disease, war and death. Spanish Baroque sculptures used precious materials to represent various body parts; beautifully-painted glass for realistic eyes; ivory for teeth; paper-thin marble for finger nails, and so on, and the effect is amazing. One notable statue, Ecce Homo by De Mena uses real twigs for the crown of thorns to great effect. De Mena was perhaps the first notable Spanish sculptor to both create a statue and then paint it himself, professional painters before him having been commissioned to undertake this highly-skilled work. Many of the exhibited works belong to one collector, now resident in Luxemburg but with a strong personal connection to Brugge, hence the joint locale for the exhibition. First shown in Sint Jans and subsequently moving to the Musee Nationale d’Histoire et d’Art in Luxemburg. Clearly these works of art, rarely exhibited outside Spain, have touched a nerve; over 10,000 people came to see them in Brugge before Easter and they are here until October 6th.

 Ecce Homo by Pedro de Mena

Notre Dame; une petite histoire but a long blog.

I seem to have become slightly fixated on Notre Dame and in particular, its history since the calamity of the fire. The glossy Notre Dame magazine about which I wrote last week has really stirred up my feelings and interest! I have had an absorbing time online learning of some significant events in its turbulent story following its creation between 1160 and 1260 A.D.

Abelard and Heloise in a 14th
century manuscript of the
Roman de la Rose. 

Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Templars
burned at the stake adjacent to the apse of
Notre Dame. 1314..

The construction of Notre Dame marked a high point in French Gothic architecture. It stands, dominating the Latin Quarter in the Fourth arrondissement, home of scholars and students over many centuries and has always been regarded as an elegant marker of Paris as a city of high culture, epitomising Paris’s emergence as a centre of learning. Pierre Abelard, the historically famous philosopher, taught Logic and Theology at the great cathedral school of Notre Dame in the 12^th century before the commencement of the present building.  The famous names and historical occurrences associated with Notre Dame enable the world to understand what this majestic cathedral represents in intellect and culture to the soul of France. But its history has been turbulent!

 1572 the future Henri 1V, a Huguenot, married
Marguerite de Valois, a Catholic, at Notre Dame.

The last Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake in 1314 on an islet next to the apse of Notre Dame. In 1431 the boy King Henry V1 of England was crowned there as King of France to underline English claims to the French throne. From the 16^th century, the cathedral fell victim to France’s political and religious strife and to changing cultural tastes. For instance in 1548 Huguenot Protestants vandalised the church’s holy statues. In 1572, following the wedding designed to end the blood shed in the name of religion, when the future Henri 1V, a Huguenot, married Marguerite de Valois, a Catholic, in front of the cathedral, [and not inside, in Henri’s nod to religious sensitivities) within days, thousands of Protestants, in Paris for the wedding, were slaughtered in the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

 The beginning of the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre,
four days after the wedding. Spread from Paris, August 1572
throughout France ending in October 1572. Tens of
thousands of Protestants [Huguenots] were killed.

The 18^th century equated Gothic art, the mediaeval period, to the Dark Ages; thus, in the early 1750s the clergy removed the splendid stained glass replacing it with clear, ‘to let in the light’ and priceless sculptures were knocked down to ease the way for processions. The 13^th century spire, judged unsteady, was removed and not replaced but the period of the French Revolution and afterwards, was much more destructive and disrespectful. The Notre Dame bells were removed and melted down in 1791; the 28 statues of the Biblical Kings of Judah along the front portal, were beheaded in 1793 and everything transportable, was looted. Later that year, religion was banished in France, and Notre Dame became an atheist Temple of Reason dedicated to Enlightenment and Revolutionary ideals. Eventually, increasingly little-used, it became a warehouse for storing food. However, it was rescued and returned to the Catholic Church in 1802 in time for the 1804 coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte who had an eye for theatre and for his destiny!

Victor Hugo, 

As many mediaeval Parisian buildings were pulled down in the early 19^th century, Notre Dame trembled but lingered, generally unloved, until Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, published in 1831 re-awakened widespread popular interest and affection for the cathedral, and a massive restoration project between 1844 and 1864 restored it to its former glory It was during this period that Eugene Viollet-le-Duc’s spire was designed and erected; the wonderful Rosette windows restored; the headless sculptures repaired and mediaeval-looking gargoyles created! Twenty one of the severed heads were only recovered in 1977 behind a wall in an old Parisian mansion.

 Hitler in Paris 1940

De Gaulle leading the march down the Champs
Elysees to Notre Dame, Aug. 26th 1945.

In the 20^th century came a succession of traumas: two World Wars with the German occupation of Paris, in the 1940s; student riots in 1968 and the subsequent political turbulence. But de Gaulle marched his troops down the Champs Elysees to a thanksgiving Mass for deliverance in Notre Dame in August 1945. In 1970 his memorial service was held in Notre Dame, attended by world leaders. The only other French president thus honoured was Francois Mitterand in 1996.

The mass devotion of the French to Notre Dame, despite the determinedly secular nature of the State, thus gained huge impetus in the 19^th century and continues today. The popular emotion may be less spiritual than intellectual and cultural for a building in the heart of the nation’s cultural life: the Left Bank, the Sorbonne, the bookshops and the bouquinistes along the Seine all nearby and all delineating the intellectual mirror of the city in which Paris sees itself. The drama of the fire, uncontrollably destructive and theatrically terrifying, assaulted this complex devotion, causing the shared public anguish.

 Outside Notre Dame, crowds listen to the Mass for
Francois Mitterand relayed. January 1996.

 Les bouquinistes de Paris.

 Shared French anguish during the fire.

1.