Turin, four Gothic sculptures coming from Notre-Dame, Paris, to Palazzo Madama

Four Gothic sculptures from the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris will be on display at Palazzo Madama in Turin as part of the exhibition Notre-Dame de Paris. Gothic Sculptures from the Great Cathedral. Scheduled to run from April 5 to Sept. 30, the exhibition curated by Palazzo Madama curator Simonetta Castronovo and set up in the museum’s Hall of Coats of Arms , is the result of a collaboration with the Musée de Cluny - Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris.

The event takes the form of a dossier exhibition dedicated to the theme of French Gothic sculpture in the first half of the 1200s and, in particular, to the construction site of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. From the portal of the Coronation of the Virgin on the western facade comes theAngel’sHead, while from the portal of the northern arm of the transept come the Head of a Wizard King, the Head of a Bearded Man, and the Head of a Female Figure, an allegory of a theological virtue. These four works, in addition to being examples of the highest quality of medieval European sculpture, bear witness to that moment of Gothic civilization referred to by the celebrated art historian Cesare Gnudi as “Gothic classicism” or “Gothic naturalism,” which also had a strong influence in the late 13th century on the protagonists of Gothic art in Italy: Giotto, Nicola Pisano, Giovanni Pisano, and Arnolfo di Cambio.

The heads are presented with an audiovisual set-up, created by Leandro Agostini, that recreates an architectural and environmental background for the sculptures, enriching the visit with projections and voiceovers, which animate the four figures and tell their story. In this way, the exhibition is intended to become an opportunity for in-depth study of Notre-Dame’s extraordinary Gothic sculptures, while simultaneously offering visitors a narrative about the Parisian cathedral (from the Middle Ages to the destruction following the French Revolution, up to Eugène Viollet-le-Duc ’s integrative restorations in the mid-19th century) and an illustration of the different iconographic and stylistic features of its portals.

Between 1793 and 1794, the four sculptures on display at the Palais Madame were removed from the Paris cathedral, along with many others decorating the gallery of the Kings and the portals of the façade, by order of the Comité revolutionnaire de la Section de la Cité, as symbols of feudality, monarchy, and religion. In fact, since 1793 France had become a republic-Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had been guillotined earlier in the year-ruled by a Committee of Public Health headed by Robespierre. The sculptures, many now in the state of fragments, abandoned for a long time in the churchyard, were later given to city contractors interested in reusing them as building materials. A loss that is at the origin of the massive restoration of the cathedral in the years 1845-64 by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus, who had to rely on ancient drawings and engravings depicting the portals to create the new sculptures to replace the lost ones, imitating in style the language of contemporary Gothic sculptures from Chartres, Reims and Amiens. Many of the original sculptures of Notre-Dame, including the four works on display at the Palazzo Madama, along with hundreds of fragments, were found in 1977 during work on the foundations of the hôtel Moreau in Paris, headquarters of the Banque Française du commerce extérieur, which then decided to donate them to the French state for deposit at the Musée de Cluny, which has been preserving them since 1980.

The exhibition seals a fruitful collaborative relationship with the Musée de Cluny, which began back in 2015 within the European Network of Medieval Art Museums, which was established in 2011 to promote joint exhibition initiatives, shared research, conferences and symposia on the medieval art heritage preserved in such institutions. The network today brings together the Musée de Cluny in Paris, the Bargello Museum in Florence, the Schnütgen Museum in Cologne, the Diocesan Museum of Vic in Catalonia, Palazzo Madama- Museo Civico d’Arte Antica in Turin, the Musée Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp, the Catharijnconvent in Utrecht and the Musée de l’Oeuvre Notre-Dame in Strasbourg. The Musée de Cluny and Palazzo Madama have already produced a major exhibition in partnership: Les émaux de Limoges à décor profane. Autour des collections du cardinal Guala Bicchieri (Paris, Musée de Cluny, April 13-August 29, 2016), then presented in Turin under the title Un cardinal en voyage. Guala Bicchieri collector of Gothic art between Vercelli, Limoges, Paris and London (November 10, 2016 - February 6, 2017).

For all information you can visit the official website of Palazzo Madama.

Pictured: Head of King Wizard

Source: press release

Turin, four Gothic sculptures coming from Notre-Dame, Paris, to Palazzo Madama

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