As restoration work on the cathedral enters its final stage, the Musée du Louvre dedicates an unprecedented exhibition to the treasury of Notre-Dame de Paris. This treasury, uniting sacerdotal objects and vestments necessary for worship, relics and reliquaries, manuscript books as well as other precious artefacts given as acts of piety, will then return to the cathedral’s neo-Gothic sacristy, built to hold it by Jean Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc from 1845 to 1850.
This exhibition provides a condensed history of the treasury through more than 120 works, restoring them to the context of its age-old history: from its origins to the Middle Ages up to its resurrection in the 19th century and full flowering with Viollet-le-Duc during the Second Empire.
Notre-By returning to the treasury’s origins, the exhibition reveals its diversity and richness, particularly through surviving manuscripts. Although during the French Revolution reliquaries and liturgical objects in precious metal were entirely destroyed, the paintings, drawings and engravings exhibited provide a glimpse of their splendour. For the coronation of Napoleon I at Notre-Dame, the treasury was reconstituted and enriched with prestigious relics, notably those of the Crown of Thorns and the Wood of the Cross (not shown at the Musée du Louvre), transferred from the former treasury of Sainte-Chapelle and for which new reliquaries were commissioned.
Between 1845 and 1865, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was given responsibility for the restoration of the cathedral and reconstruction of the sacristy, the treasury’s home. He then offered to create new liturgical furnishings and reliquaries to harmonise with Notre-Dame’s Gothic architecture.
The exhibition provides an unprecedented retrospective, exploring for the first time the history of the treasury prior to the French Revolution. Inventories, historic accounts, paintings, illuminated manuscripts, prints and other illustrated documents, along with several surviving pieces, will retrace the long story, starting in the Merovingian era, of Notre-Dame’s treasury, offering a glimpse of lavishness rivalling even the dazzling objects made for Notre-Dame in the nineteenth century.
Exhibition Curators :
Department of Decorative Arts, Musée du Louvre : Jannic Durand, honorary curator; Anne Dion-Tenenbaum, curator and deputy director; Florian Meunier, curator; Michèle Bimbenet-Privat, honorary curator.
THE MEDIEVAL TREASURY
The founding of Paris’s first diocese, reflecting the development of Christianity in the capital, is traditionally ascribed to Saint Denis in the mid-3rd century. The present-day cathedral was begun shortly after 1160. The history of the cathedral’s earlier buildings is still uncertain, but its dedication to the Virgin ’Notre-Dame’ was established in the 9th century.
The first evidence of its treasury dates back to the 6th century. In the 9th century, venerable relics enhanced the cathedral’s aura and the renown of the treasury, at that time entrusted to a chapter of canons. The relics of the 4th-century Saint Marcel, one of the first bishops of Paris, were transferred there to escape Norman invasions. The cathedral then rivalled the prestigious abbeys of Saint-Denis, Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Sainte-Geneviève.
Shortly after 1100, a fragment of the True Cross, a relic of the Passion of Christ, was sent from Jerusalem by Canon Anseau, priest and cantor of the Holy Sepulchre.
About 1160, Maurice de Sully began construction of the new cathedral; beginning in the 13th century, the treasury was housed in a building communicating directly with the choir of the cathedral. The historical events of the following centuries dispersed this medieval treasury entirely, with the exception of a few illuminated books and an ancient vase in carved agate given by Queen Isabeau of Bavaria in 1425 and later acquired by the painter Peter Paul Rubens (1557–1640).
The series of preserved inventories, the earliest of which dates to 1343, gives further insight into the treasury and allows us to imagine its splendour. Its donors were the kings, queens, princes, bishops and canons who expressed their gratitude to the cathedral. The treasury also included precious illuminated books, among which is the Book of Oaths, a masterpiece of the mid-13th century upon which bishops and canons took their oaths of ordination.
THE TREASURY DURING THE ANCIEN RÉGIME: EXPANSION AND DESTRUCTION
The 16th century introduced a period of major commissions, as shown in the exhibition by the design for the cantoral staff by Rosso Fiorentino, the first of the Italian artists summoned to France by King François I, executed in silver gilt by the goldsmith Macé Bégault in 1538. Several illuminated books produced in the same era for Notre-Dame and the treasury also bear witness to this expansion
On the other hand, the French Wars of Religion in the second half of the century devastated the treasury. Starting in the 1560s, some of its finest pieces were melted down. In 1590, during the siege by King Henri IV, the governor of Paris had the great golden cross given by King Philippe Auguste taken apart.
In 1622, the elevation of Paris from a suffragan of Sens to an archdiocese, followed by Louis XIII’s 1638 vow consecrating France to the Virgin, announced a new era. In accord with Louis XIII’s vow, the treasury was endowed with a series of tapestries of Scenes of the Life of the Virgin, produced 1645–1657 from cartoons by the painters Philippe de Champaigne, Jacques Stella and Charles Poerson and displayed in the choir on major feasts. They were sold in 1739 to the cathedral of Strasbourg, which still holds them today. They are evoked in the exhibition by the paintings that served as their models or modelli, as well as by drawings.
Notre-Dame’s choir was remodelled late in the reign of Louis XIV, a prelude to further expansion of the treasury, enriched by monumental pieces in precious metal produced by the finest goldsmiths of the era. Paintings, drawings and a magnificent 1753 evangelion illustrate some of them, such as the monstrance or Great Sun in silver gilt, made by the goldsmith Claude II Ballin in 1708 from designs by Robert de Cotte (one of which is displayed in the exhibition), or that by Thomas Germain, goldsmith to the king, delivered in 1718–1719. This was a time of splendour for the treasury, remarkable equally for the number and quality of its liturgical ornaments.
The Mass of Canon de La Porte, painted by Jean Jouvenet about 1710, shows the generous canon officiating before the Great Sun, whose acquisition he financed. The altar candlesticks come from a chapel commissioned in 1705 from the goldsmith Guillaume Jacob by the cardinal and primate (high archbishop) of Poland, now held in Gniezno (Poland).
FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION TO THE CONSECRATION OF NAPOLEON I: DISPERSAL AND REASSEMBLY OF THE TREASURY
The treasury was destroyed during the French Revolution. On 2 November 1789, Church property was nationalised. On 3 March 1791, objects ‘not used for worship’ were seized and melted down. Over a single night in August 1792, the treasury’s liturgical objects, together with all its relics, vanished completely.
In 1802, the signing of the Concordat re-established Catholic worship in Notre-Dame. It was then necessary to supply the cathedral with new liturgical objects and ornaments to replace those that had been lost .
Napoleon’s consecration in 1804 was an unhoped-for opportunity for Notre-Dame, to which were attributed what remained of the Relics of the Passion acquired by Saint Louis between 1239 and 1242, most notably the Crown of Thorns, previously held in the treasury of Sainte-Chapelle, for which an imposing reliquary was commissioned from Jean-Charles Cahier in 1806.
In 1828, the relic of the True Cross from the Princess Palatine and a Holy Nail from the church of Saint-Germain-des-Près, rescued from the destruction of 1793, found refuge in Notre-Dame in a new reliquary by the goldsmith Jean-Pierre Famechon. The treasury also received royal and imperial regalia, as had that of Saint-Denis in earlier times: the Insignia of Charlemagne and the Insignia of the Emperor after the consecration.
THE TREASURY IN THE 19TH CENTURY : FROM LOOTING TO RENEWAL (WITH EUGÈNE VIOLLET-LE-DUC)
Under the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830), the treasury, which since 1802 had patiently been reassembled, benefited by the close relationship between royal power and the Catholic Church.
In 1814 Louis XVIII re-established the processions of the vow of Louis XIII. For them, he commissioned a large silver Virgin from the goldsmith Jean-Baptiste Odiot. This piece was finally given by Charles X in 1826. Nonetheless, the treasury suffered anew from looting of the archdiocese and related destruction. It experienced major losses during the July Revolution of 1830, with looting of the archdiocese and the treasury, repeated in the insurrection of February 1831.
A competition to restore the cathedral was organised in 1843 and won by Jean-Baptiste Antoine Lassus and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. The project included reconstruction of the sacristy. Jacques-Germain Soufflot’s neoclassical building had been damaged during the uprising and no longer met the chapter’s needs.
Construction and interior fit-out were not completed until 1854, when the treasury took its place in the new neo-Gothic building.
Beginning in 1855, and especially between 1866 and 1869, Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for designing liturgical furniture and reliquaries in harmony with the style of this new setting. This unified vision of the cathedral, its furniture and liturgical objects reached a high point in Notre-Dame during the Second Empire. The exhibition presents a selection from this uniquely coherent neo-Gothic treasury, with spectacular pieces and their preparatory drawings.
