What’s left now? It’s not just the external stone structure of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris that is irreplaceable, it’s…
What’s left now?
It’s not just the external stone structure of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris that is irreplaceable, it’s also everything inside it, from scores of religious sculptures to ancient stained-glass rose windows, to the chandeliers and organs and church bells, to the church vestments and the holy relics.
Some good-news pictures emerged from the ruins of the cathedral on Tuesday: Important relics were saved. The three largest and oldest stained-glass rose windows survived. The huge organ, dating from the 1730s and boasting an estimated 8,000 pipes, also is intact, although it could be damaged by heat or water.
And Nicolas Coustou’s white-marble Pietà sculpture is still standing, seemingly unscathed, at its place before the main altar. It was surrounded by piles of charred debris, some of which badly damaged the altar, but there were candles still standing upright in heavy fixtures nearby.
« Most immediately, the great tragedy is the structure itself and its fittings, » says Sheila Bonde, a professor of the history of art and architecture at Brown University. « Many people don’t know that the roofs are timber, largely replaced in the 19th century, and they have been totally consumed.
« Masonry will burn and degrade under intense heat, which is clearly what is happening, but we can only wait and see what kind of damage has spread to the church within. »
Wait and see and worry, she says. Especially about the most famous aspect of any Gothic cathedral, especially Notre Dame: the stained-glass windows that bring light and color into the interior.
« Some of (Notre Dame’s) stained-glass windows are original, they’re medieval, » Bonde said. (The cathedral was built between about 1160 and about 1260.) « The massive rose windows are susceptible to heat because they are glass and they are held together by lead, which melts. »
Inside, the wooden parts of the church are almost certainly destroyed after most of the roof caved in. Although the exterior is stone and the interior ceiling vaults are stone, the roof is slate.
But have the flames also consumed sculptures like the 19th-century statute of Joan of Arc by Charles Desvergnes? She is just one of numerous religious sculptures within the cathedral, and it’s a hopeful sign that the 18th-century Pietà at the altar has survived.
« It’s not looking good, » reported a grim Camille Serchuk, a professor of art history at Southern Connecticut State University, who happens to be in Paris for meetings this week. She was on a Metro train miles from the cathedral but could still smell the smoke. And it was a beautiful day in Paris, she said, a day when a heavy rainstorm might have helped put out the fire sooner.
« The combination of heat, smoke and fire, it’s very unlikely that any paintings inside survived but we will have a better sense tomorrow, » Serchuk said.
About a dozen large paintings of religious scenes and dating from between 1630 and 1708 hung in Notre Dame. On Tuesday, French Culture Minister Franck Riester said the cathedral’s paintings will be removed starting Friday, according to the Associated Press.
