Photo
[Ed. Hautecœur, Paris.
THE NORTH TRANSEPT.
At the angle of the south transept in front of the great south-east pier of the crossing is the famous statue of the Virgin and Child, which, in Notre Dame, occupies a place not unlike the far more famous and more venerable statue of S. Peter in the vast basilica which at Rome is dedicated to him. Mr. Belloc has used a photograph of it as the frontispiece to the volume quoted in the footnote, and he writes of it as follows: “But of all the additions to the interior of Notre Dame which popular fancy or the traditions of some crisis give it, none is more worthy of being known than that which alone survives of them, and which I have made the frontispiece of this book. It is not that the statue has—as so much of the fourteenth century can boast—a peculiar beauty; it is indeed (when seen from below, as it was meant to be) full of a delicacy that the time was adding to the severity of the thirteenth century; it has from that standpoint a very graceful gesture; the exaggeration of the forehead disappears, the features show the delicate and elusive smile that the fourteenth century always gave to its Madonnas, and there appears also in its general attitude the gentle inclination of courtesy and attention that was also a peculiar mark of a statuary which was just escaping the rigidity of Early Gothic. But its beauty, slight and ill-defined, is not, I repeat, the interest of the statue. It is because this image dates from the awakening of the capital to its position in France, because it is the symbol of Paris, that it rises up alone, as you may see it now, where the southern transept comes into the nave,[13] all lit with candles and standing out against the blue and the lilies. It is a kind of core and centre to the city, and is, as it were, the genius catching up the spirit of the wars, and giving the generation of the last siege and reconstruction, as it will give on in the future to others in newer trials, a figure in which all the personality of the place is stored up and remembered. It was made just at the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War, it received the devotion of Etienne Marcel, it heard the outcry that followed the defeat of Poictiers and the captivity of the king.” Mr. Belloc concludes: “It has been for these five hundred years and more the middle thing, carrying with full meaning the name ‘Our Lady of Paris,’ which seems to spread out from it to the Church, and to overhang like an influence the whole city, so that one might wonder sometimes as one looked at it whether it was not the figure of Paris itself one saw.”
In front of the statue is an iron grille terminating in spikes for candles. After Poitiers, the citizens of Paris annually offered a gigantic candle to be burned in front of this statue in order that the ills which afflicted France might cease. It was of the exact length of the walls of the capital itself, and was of course coiled up ropewise. The first presentation was made on August 14th, 1437. The candle necessarily grew with every increase in the area of the city. By the beginning of the seventeenth century it was felt that the limits of vastness had been reached, and in 1605 a silver lamp, which was always to burn before the statue, was presented instead of the candle. This was destroyed by the Revolutionists. On the pillar below the statue is a sculpture said to represent Eve with the serpent’s tail. The identity of the existing statue with the original one so eloquently described by Mr. Belloc has been doubted, but the grounds for doubt appear to be small. In this transept are two marble slabs in memory of seventy-five victims of the Commune.
The place on the north side, corresponding with the statue of Notre-Dame de Paris on the south, is filled by a statue of St. Denis, a fairly good work by Nicolas Coustou.[14] The splendid glass of the great rose window in the south transept has in the main divisions of its four circles the twelve apostles, and a host of bishops and saints with symbols and palms, to whom angels bear golden crowns of glory. In one of the small compartments St. Denis is represented carrying his head, and in others are scenes from what is known as “les Combats des Apôtres,” amongst them being the arrival of St. Matthew in the presence of the King of Egypt, and the baptism of the King after his conversion by the Apostle. The great rose window of the opposite transept is devoted to scenes from the life of the Virgin. She is represented with Christ in her arms, and is surrounded with an army of patriarchs, judges, prophets, priests and kings, all of whom are related to the Saviour by ties of blood or as His spiritual forerunners. The glass includes curious representations of the Antichrist, decapitating Enoch; and of the destruction of the Antichrist by the Almighty, who appears in a cloud. The small rose or wheel windows in the sides of the transepts have been filled with glass from designs by Steinheil. The pavement of the transepts is of squares of black Bourbon marble alternating with Dinan stone. Great attention was given by Viollet-le-Duc to the polychromatic decoration of the transepts, but it cannot be said that he has been more successful in these parts of the church than elsewhere. The effect aimed at appears to have been that of tapestry with simple patterns; indeed, of the whole it is said, “cette décoration forme, jusque sous les roses, une sort de brillante tapisserie.” Some of the canopies are of the most intricate patterns, but they would be better suited to wood or metal work than to painting. The scheme includes a series of paintings by Perrodin of persons distinguished in the history of the diocese of Paris. The figures have elaborate decorative borders.
The removal of statues and memorials from the nave, which we have already deplored, had just the shadow of a justification from the purely æsthetic standpoint. Many of the monuments were incongruous, some were positively grotesque. In Westminster Abbey we have an example of the shocking effect of inappropriate statuary in a Gothic building; we know, only too well, how terribly one of the most beautiful interiors in the world suffers from a crowd of tombs which are out of keeping with the very spirit of the place. By the removal of the memorials at Notre Dame, the church has doubtless regained the aspect intended by its designers.
The nave leads uninterruptedly to the choir, which ends in the high altar; and the high altar, with the adjacent shrine of St. Marcel, was the primary reason of the existence of the cathedral. We have seen that in its earlier form little or no provision was made for chapels and consequently for side altars. Everything was arranged to concentrate the eye on the chief altar, and to lend dignity to its position. Its sacred character was respected even in the far-off days in which the body of the church was used for commercial purposes, or for festivals the reverse of religious.