NOTRE DAME DE PARIS
The Heart of the Church
A century after the building of St. Denis, the new cathedral of Paris was subject for a new program that would light up the entire building by raising the height of the windows to match with great vaults. At Notre Dame, it was declared that architecture would serve as much as liturgy. The consonance of fifth musical chords were to be incorporated into the building not just for acoustic purposes but also their aesthetics climate. The architects of Notre Dame at Paris, understanding the centrality of the church, wanted a structure that would last all political institutions, in hyperbole, to be the enduring stone of French cathedrals. The building nonetheless suffered fire in April 2019 and must partially be rebuilt.
Name: Notre Dame de Paris
Artist: Bishop Maurice de Sully et al
Material: Limestone, mortar, marble, wood, glass, metals
Date: 1163 – 1345 AD
Culture: French Gothic
Scale: Length: 128m (420 ft); Width: 48m (157 ft)
Current Location: Paris, France
Notre Dame of Paris had received a relic considered to be the particle of the True Cross in 1109 (von Simson 1988, pg. 23). To distinguish Gothic eschatological theme from Byzantine and Romanesque programs, Professor Sedlmayr considered that the relic is incorporated not into an illusion of thematic history but to a detailed program of order and structure of number and light. In such physical reification do we see beyond symbolism toward materiality (von Simson 1988, pg. 234). Sacred proportions were entailed with stories of Noah and the Ark, Moses and the Tabernacle, Solomon and the Temple, and Ezekiel and the Celestial City. Light and transfiguration were the elements of stained glass. Volume and surface, such as those of the flying buttresses were meant to add luminosity symbolizing prismatic spokes. Notre Dame brought out all the defining features first developed by Abbot Suger.
In the distinction at Notre Dame to encounter the Biblical metaphor of the New Covenant of the risen Jerusalem, unlike at Chartres, the Last Judgment and Royal Portal of Kings are played out to a retrospective audience of the New Jerusalem and invite them to a theological body of the House of the Lord, not so much as the walls of Jerusalem, but as the individual spirit and in particular, in the Virgin Mary, who is the enable of the promise of the Messiah. (Erlande-Brandenburg 1998, pg. 105). In the central portal of the Western façade, the composition of Christ resting his pedestal on Jerusalem depicts Christ of the Second Coming whom Jerusalem the Bride seats above the horizon. This meant the program at Notre Dame de Paris entailed more humanistic stylistic formulations than what was pioneered at Chartres. In a world without written press, the image of Notre Dame was not only a narrative to be learned, but must synthesize condensed means of communication of the whole of one body of the Church with Christ who thus establishes the New Covenant with the resurrection of Jerusalem. The absence of anecdote proposed by Maurice de Sully meant that the saints and angels appeared regularly in formation which pared down their presence as component of the whole structural program. Personifications of the Church and the now past Synagogue conjures the idea of a new glory. In these images, Christ is often shown removing the veil from the synagogue on His left and crowning the Church on His right (Mâle 1978, loc. 2483). The dialogue between the statues and columns project well from their space and occupy their own sphere of holiness. (Erlande-Brandenburg 1998, pg. 123)