Notre-Dame De Paris: History, Art, and Revival from 1163 to Tomorrow by Antonia Felix

(New York: Sterling / Union Square, 2019), 192

  • "Gothic Architecture...aimed at being at the same time colossal and light." (Jean Bony, Art Historian, x)
  • Quotes from Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame
    • "The human race has never conceived an important thought that it has not written down in stone." (11)
    • "This was the only form… in which free thought was possible, and therefore found full expression only in those books called edifices. Therefore, having but this one outlet, it rushed towards it from all parts; and hence the countless mass of Cathedrals spread over all Europe, a number so prodigious that it seems incredible, even after verifying it with one's own eyes. All the material, all the intellectual forces of society, converged to that one point—architecture. In this way, under the pretext of building churches to the glory of God, the art developed to magnificent proportions. In those days, he who was born a poet became an architect." (16-18)
      • This quote ends with an inspirational thought, but I disagree with the sentiment Hugo expresses in the prior couple of pages that seem to celebrate and lift up gothic architecture as an overthrow of authority against the Romanesque history...no doubt modern architects feel similarly about the real beauty they displace?
  • "Medieval people knew—perhaps more vividly than we—that human life is a dangerous proposition...When pilgrims enter the hull of this cathedral-ship, they are meant to feel a rush of relief, a keen sensation of being secure even as the waves crash against the vessel." (96, from Heaven in Stone and Glass by Robert Barron)
  • "The cathedral is the fruit of human genius; it is the masterpiece of man. The human being is the fruit of divine genius; it is the masterpiece of God...The profound reason why Notre-Dame cathedral was built was to manifest man's inner impulse toward God." (Michael Aupetit, Archbishop of Paris, 168)

ix: Notre Dame, Paris. Watercolor drawing by Victor Lundy, 1949 January 18. link

20-21: Paris. Notre Dame. Lithograph by Charles Rivière, between 1870 and 1879. link

52-53: The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of the Empress Josephine by Pope Pius VII, 2nd December 1804 Jacques-Louis David (1807) link

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Topic: Architecture, Gothic Architecture, Notre Dame de Paris

Source: UA Library

Created: 2022-07-03-Sun
Updated: 2022-12-23-Fri