Cultural Heritage

Who was it that said one look at Chartres Cathedral turned him into an art historian? Or art-lover for life? Henry Adams? Bernard Berenson? I can’t remember, but it was probably more than one person. Kenneth Clark called it “one of the two most beautiful covered spaces in the world” (Hagia Sophia in Istanbul being the other).

Maybe not anymore. Hear what Martin Filler, writing on the website of The New York Review of Books, has to say after a recent visit:

Carried away by the splendors of the moment, I did not initially realize that something was very wrong. I had noticed the floor-to-ceiling scrim-covered scaffolding near the crossing of the nave and transepts, but had assumed it was routine maintenance. But my more attentive wife, the architectural historian Rosemarie Haag Bletter—who as a Columbia doctoral candidate took courses on Romanesque sculpture with the legendary Meyer Schapiro and Gothic architecture with the great medievalist Robert Branner—immediately noticed that large areas of the sanctuary’s deep gray limestone surface had been painted.

The first portion she pointed out was a pale ochre wall patterned with thin, perpendicular white lines mimicking mortar between masonry blocks. Looking upward we then saw panels of blue faux marbre, high above them gilded column capitals and bosses (the ornamental knobs where vault ribs intersect), and, nearby, floor-to-ceiling piers covered in glossy yellow trompe l’oeil marbling, like some funeral parlor in Little Italy.

I haven’t seen this first-hand, obviously, but it sounds like a mess. Take a look at the top photo–that’s what is underway. I couldn’t find an exact parallel picture on the web (though there may well be one), so I posted something similar from Chartres.

What is this impulse to make everything new–even if it is a wrong-headed attempt to restore to the original? I’m not against conservation by any means, but this one does surely seem wrong.

I also agree with another of Filler’s points: “why had we heard nothing about [this] before?” It is, after all, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Where was the French press? Where was the European art press? Or did they cover it, and we missed it?

Filler says this effort dates to 2009, when the French culture ministry set out to “do no less than repaint the entire interior in bright whites and garish colors that are intended to return the sanctuary to its medieval state. This sweeping program to “reclaim” Chartres from its allegedly anachronistic gloom is supposed to be completed in 2017.”

Here’s what’s wrong with that:

The belief that a heavy-duty reworking can allow us see the cathedral as its makers did is not only magical thinking but also a foolhardy concept that makes authentic artifacts look fake. To cite only one obvious solecism, the artificial lighting inside the present-day cathedral—which no one has suggested removing—already makes the interiors far brighter than they were during the Middle Ages, and thus we can be sure that the painted walls look nothing like they would have before the advent of electricity.

Furthermore, the exact chemical components of the medieval pigments remain unknown. The original paint is thought to have flaked off within a few generations and not been replaced, so for most of the building’s eight-century history it has not been experienced with painted surfaces. The emerging color scheme now allows a direct, and deeply disheartening, before-and-after comparison.

He has many more details, disheartening ones, plus another picture or two of the repainted areas.

But, alas, this seems unstoppable. If you have not already been to Chartres, and luckily I have, it may be too late.

Imagine being a French farmer, plowing your field near a village named Berthouville in rural Normandy; it’s 1830. And you hit something, stop and discover the first items in a trove that grew to 90 silver and gilt-silver statuettes and vessels dating to the 3rd century and before.

It happened, and now, after four years of conservation work at the Getty Museum, they went on view today at the Getty Villa. Known as the Berthouville Treasure, they appear to be an ancient offering to the Gallo-Roman god Mercury, the museum says. It’s the first time that the hoard, which is owned by the Department of Coins, Medals and Antiques at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, has been displayed in its entirety outside of Paris. The Getty has thrown in some “precious gems, jewelry, and other Roman luxury objects from the Cabinet’s royal collections” to heighten the appeal of the hoard.

But for those who have already had a peek–and I know a couple of them, though they wish to remain anonymous–the Berthouville Treasure is quite fabulous (see right here, below)

The Biblioteque Nationale bought the hoard for 15,000 francs, likely thwarting local plans to melt down the silver pieces. Instead, there were two additional excavations at the site, in 1861 and in 1896.

There’s a marvelous story in Fall 2014 issue of The Getty, the Getty Trust’s magazine. It tells how the pieces arrived at the Getty “dusty, grimy, darkened from tarnish, and the surfaces were mottled,” according to Eduardo Sanchez, a conservator at the museum. “We could tell different hands had done the restorations, and many of the inscriptions we later found were not yet visible.” The museum’s conservators worked with scientists from the Getty Conservation Institute.

Unfortunately, you will have to ask the Getty for a copy of the magazine, because it’s not online (should be!). Instead, I will have to link to the exhibition press release, which doesn’t have the details of the conservation work. And I will link to a few posts on the Getty Iris blog over the last few years, while work was being done on the Berthouville Treasure.

Here’s the “welcome” in 2011; a post about “the search” in 2012; and, also in 2012, more about the conservation. All of them have pictures, though not the ones I show here–of the hoard, of one cup (of a pair) and of Mercury.

I think it’s very interesting that France sent these treasure objects to the Getty for conservation–so hats off to the Getty on that. And on showing them to us: the Treasure will stay art the Getty until next August. So I may see it yet, in the flesh.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Getty