Musée de Cluny
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The Musée de Cluny, officially known as Musée National du Moyen Âge, is a museum in Paris, France. It is located in the Ve arrondissement at 6 Place Paul Painlevé, south of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, between the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Rue Saint-Jacques.
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[edit] The building
The structure, first started in 1334 combines Gothic and Renaissance elements and was formerly the town house of the abbots of Cluny; it was made into a public museum in 1833 and apart from the name it no longer possesses anything originally connected with the abbey.
It is perhaps the most outstanding example still extant of civic architecture in medieval Paris.
Originally the Town House was part of a larger Cluniac building effort that also included a building (no longer standing) for a religious college in the Place de la Sorbonne (just south of the present day Cluny along Blvd. Saint-Michel. Although originally intended for the use of the Cluny abbots, the residence was taken over by Jacques Amboise Bishop of Clermont and Abbot of the Jumieges in rebuilt to its present form and design in the period of 1485-1500. (Horne at 62). Occupants of the house over the years have included Mary Tudor--installed here after the death of her husband Louis XII by his successor Francis I of France in 1515 so he could watch her more closely, particularly to see if she was pregnant. 17th Century occupants included several Papal Nuncios including Marazin. (Id. at 65).
In 1793 it was confiscated by the state and for the next three decades served several different functions. At one point it was owned by a physician who used the magnificent Flamboyant chapel on the first floor as a dissection room. (Michelin at 265-266).
The Cluny began as a public museum in 1833 when Alexandre du Sommerard moved here and installed here his large collection of Medieval and Renaissance objects. (Album de Museé at 5). Upon his death in 1842 the collection was purchased by the state and his son became the museums first curator. The present gardens were opened in 1971.
The Cluny Town House is itself partially constructed on the remains of Gallo-Roman baths dating from the 3rd century (known as the Thermes de Cluny ), which are famous in their own right and which may still be visited. In fact, the museum itself actually consists of two buildings: the frigidarium ("cooling room"), where the remains of the Thermes de Cluny are, and the Hôtel de Cluny itself, wherein reside its impressive collections.
[edit] Sources
- ‘’Seven Ages of Paris’’, Alistair Horne, (ISBN 1-4000-3446-9) 2004
- ‘’Michelin, the Green Guide: Paris’’, (ISBN 2060008735), 2001
- Album de Museé national du Moyen Age Thermes de Cluny, Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, Dany Sandron (ISBN 2-7118-2777-1)
[edit] The museum
This museum houses a variety of important artifacts dating to the Middle Ages. In particular, it is renowned for its tapestry collection, which includes La Dame à la Licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn) from the so-called tapestry cycle of the same name, consisting of a series of six.
Other notable works stored there include Gothic sculptures from the 7th and 8th centuries. There are also works of gold, ivory, antique furnishings, and illuminated manuscripts.
[edit] Miscellaneous
North of the museum there is a garden ("Forêt de la Licorne") inspired by the tapestries.
The Hôtel Cluny Sorbonne, at 8 Rue Victor Cousin, Ve arrondissement, famously haunted by Verlaine and Rimbaud in the early 1870s, is something else entirely.
[edit] References in literature
Herman Melville visited Paris in 1849, and the Hôtel de Cluny evidently fired his imagination. The structure figures prominently in Chapter 41 of Moby Dick (also called "Moby Dick"), when Ishmael, probing Ahab's "darker, deeper" motives, invokes the building as a symbol of man's noble but buried psyche.
In G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, the narrator states that the wealthy Dr. Renard's rooms "were like the Museé de Cluny." {chapter XII).
[edit] External links
