Notre Dame Treasury

Today we had a fabulous lunch at Le Relais de l'Isle on  Île Saint-Louis, and afterwards we walked across the bridge to Notre Dame to have one last look (only one week left!) and to view the relics on display in the Treasury.  Because we came from the other island, we made sure to walk through the garden behind the cathedral.

We've been having iffy weather lately, but today was an absolutely beautiful day.

Along with other relics and valuables, the Treasury purports to have pieces of the true cross and the actual crown of thorns worn by Jesus.  (Recall that St. Louis paid more for that one relic than he did to build the entire Sainte-Chapelle).  Admission to the cathedral is free, but to get into the Treasury it costs 4 Euros.  The first room contains relics of various saints and clergy of the faith.

Reliquary with bones of saints (I'm presuming...it was just labeled "Reliquaire")

Another coffer containing saintly relics:

This reliquary contains an artifact from Saint Louise de Marillac who lived in the 1600's and helped found the Daughters of Charity (with Saint Vincent de Paul).  According to Wikipedia she is, among other things, the patron saint of "disappointing children".  I found it interesting that there is such a thing, and that she is not the only patron (look it up: there are several!).

There were other treasures, such as these vestments donated by Napoleon III at his son's baptism.

Kevin almost never asks me to take his picture, so how could I say no? 

This is a copy of a monstrance (the eucharist would be placed in the empty central circle for veneration) from the time of Louis XVIII.

A view of one of the treasury rooms.

Cases of reliquaries.

A reliquary for the crown of thorns with a monstrance on either side.

Closer view of the Reliquaire de la Couronne d'Epines (Crown of Thorns Reliquary).  This reliquary was designed by Violet-Le-Duc and fabricated by goldsmith Placide Poussielgue-Rusand in 1862.  We could not tell if it actually contained the crown, since it was well above eye level.

I had thought (from looking online) that the crown of thorns reliquary would look something like this (see below), but we did not see anything resembling this anywhere in the Treasury.

Photo courtesy of Notre Dame website

Well this reliquary at least had something in it.  According to the label, this holds a piece of the cross of Saint Claude: "Reliquaire de la croix dite de Saint Claude".  Research on the internet did not turn up any Saint Claudes, Clauds, or Clouds that were martyred on a cross, so I can't figure out what this relic really is meant to be.  Maybe Saint Claude just owned a cross for general purposes, and this is a piece of it.

This is a tunic belonging to Saint Louis (King Louis IX).  It has held up pretty well, considering that he died about 740 years ago.

The painted ceiling of one of the Treasury's rooms.

By the way, if anyone is planning to be in Paris in 2013, the Cathedral of Notre Dame will be celebrating its 850th anniversary (groundbreaking was in 1163).  There are plans for a pilgrimage center and all kinds of other celebrations.  There was a bulletin board in the cathedral (that wasn't there a few weeks ago) that lists a website (www.notredamedeparis2013.com).  But that URL doesn't seem to lead anywhere...maybe the website is still under construction.

Free Museum Day: Louvre & Centre Pompidou

Today was our last chance to check out the Paris museums for free (first Sunday of every month).  Our plan of attack was to spend a few hours in the Louvre in the morning then go home, take a break, and tackle the Pompidou Center in the evening.  Despite the long line to get in via the Louvre's Pyramid entrance, the Porte des Lions entrance did not let us down and we were in without any line at all, other than waiting for the five people who walked in ahead of us to take their stuff off the security x-ray belt.  We then zoomed past the Italian Renaissance paintings to the pyramid area.

From there we explored some of the galleries we didn't see on our previous visits.  Scantily clad people seemed to be the order of the day.

Grande Odalisque by Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres

Venus de Milo

Remember this guy from our walk along the Promenade Plantée?

I tried to hold back from taking too many photos of specific pieces of art.  Instead I tried to capture an overall impression of the museum galleries. 

Italian renaissance paintings

large-format French paintings

Northern Europe late gothic sculpture

Italian sculpture

Greek antiquities

View down into the central sculpture court

Something people always say is "Remember to look UP when you're in the Louvre".  So I made sure to do that from time to time as well...

We appreciate the Louvre because its layout allows you to go from room to room without having to backtrack (very much) through rooms you've already seen.  It's actually a pretty good museum design, even though the building wasn't originally intended to be a museum.

In direct contrast was the Pompidou Center (to me, anyway). The escalator runs along just one side of the building.  This is the main pathway to get to all the floors.  On a crowded day like today, there are considerable traffic issues when there are a lot of people coming down and someone who is going up (on the outside lane) needs to cross over into the museum space.

But then again, the plexiglass walls of the escalator do give a great view towards the northwest of Paris.

My other main complaint was that there wasn't really a good "flow" from one exhibit room to the next...we found ourselves walking back through rooms we had already seen to get to new areas.  It's almost as if the designers focused more on how the building would look from the outside than how it would work as a museum.  Anyway, the classic modern "greats" were very well-represented, including Braque, Miró, Dalí , Kandinsky, Matisse, and Picasso.

Top right: Henri Matisse Pink and White Head, bottom right: Pablo Picasso Portrait of Young Girl

Dado's La Grande Ferme deserves a closer look.

The more recent modern art was a mixed bag...some of it I really liked, like Chuck Close's portrait of  Arme Glimcher (Arme).

Other pieces that I found interesting were this (perhaps?) couch, this reworked chain-link fence, this out-of-focus-on-purpose painting, and this...well, whatever this is.

Clockwise from left: V. Panton Siége, Demakersvan Panneau Lace Fence, M. Fornes *Y/Struc/Surf., B. Frize Oma

 
Here are three works by Yves Klein.  Amazingly, his monochromatic paintings have sold for multi-millions.  This gives me a serious case of "Uhhh...I can do that".

Don't be deceived, Mimmo Paladino's Elmo has nothing to do with the popular Sesame Street character.

Some of the art just seemed very pretentious.  Definitely do not touch the oversize croquet pegs leaning against the wall.  Stay behind the black line on the floor, please.

André Cadere Six Round Wooden Sticks

If you hadn't guessed, Modern art isn't really my cup of tea.  But usually I can understand why it is art.  There were a couple of cases where I honestly felt like the artist was "putting one over" on the art dealers, curators, general populace, etc.

Allan McCollum's Plaster Surrogates 1985

This looks like something you might see at a Home Depot or Mr. Bricolage:

Marthe Wéry Peinture Venise 82

And this one just looks like a kindergarten geography/craft lesson gone awry: 

Thomas Hirschhorn Outgrowth 2005

I'm sure it all comes down to personal preference...art is very subjective.  For me, it's enough to call it art if it looks like the artist at least put a little creative effort into the work.  Painting/arranging boards, hanging blacked-out picture frames, and papier mâché-ing a bunch of globes seems to me a bit like phoning it in.

But...one of the very nice things about the Pompidou Center is the view from the roof terrace.  It was early evening and a little overcast but we could still make out Sacré Coeur.

We could also see the colorful figurines in the Stravinsky Fountain down below.

We thoroughly enjoyed our last free museum day, it is wonderful that the city of Paris opens its museums to the public once a month like this.  A fun fact that I've recently learned from a tour guide is that if you looked at every piece of artwork in the Louvre for 3 seconds it would take 3 months solid to see it all.  I am sure we only scratched the surface, and probably missed many great artworks, but for now it will have to do.

Place de Vosges and the Maison Victor Hugo

We took another walk in the Marais district today, going through the Place des Vosges which is a symmetrical square of brick buildings surrounding a pretty park.  This archway is the southern entrance to the square.

There is a large cluster of shady trees in the center of the park, and four identical fountains forming a square around the center.  More shade trees line the outer edges of the square.

It's a pleasant, quiet spot.  On nice days, you'll see lots of people enjoying the sun or a picnic on the grass.  We opted to picnic on a bench in the shade, since we get plenty of sun exposure back home!

One of the more famous former residents of the Place des Vosges is Victor Hugo.  We visited his house (which is now a museum) on a previous walk through the area a few weeks ago.

Victor Hugo was a poet, statesman, and writer.  He is probably best known for his novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables.  He lived at the Place des Vosges from 1832 to 1848, and shortly afterwards he was exiled from France for his opposition to the reign of Napoleon III. This bust of the writer around age 30 was done by his friend David d'Angers.

Rodin sculpted this image of an older, saggier, Victor Hugo.

There were only a few rooms open to the public.  The Chinese-themed living room was extremely interesting.

The mid-1800's seemed to be an age of gaudy decor, judging by this overwhelming chandelier and the top-to-bottom patterned wallpaper in the study.

This is a pane from one of the windows in the stairwell.

Hugo returned to France from exile in 1870, after Napoleon III fell from power.  He was very popular with the people of France and his 81st birthday was celebrated almost as a national holiday, including a parade and other festivities.  He died two years later and was buried in the Panthéon with other heroes of France.