Sainte-Chapelle

The upper chapel of the Sainte Chapelle, restored by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century

La Sainte-Chapelle (French pronunciation: [la sɛ̃t ʃapɛl], The Holy Chapel) is a Gothic chapel on the Île de la Cité in the heart of Paris, France. It is perhaps the high point of the full tide of the rayonnante period of Gothic architecture.

Contents

History

The Sainte-Chapelle, the palatine chapel[1] in the courtyard of the royal palace on the Île de la Cité, was built to house precious relics: Christ's crown of thorns, the Image of Edessa and thirty other relics of Christ that had been in the possession of Louis IX since August 1239, when it arrived from Venice in the hands of two Dominican friars. Unlike many devout aristocrats who stole relics, the saintly Louis bought his precious relics of the Passion, purchased from the Latin emperor at Constantinople, Baldwin II, for the exorbitant sum of 135,000 livres, which was paid to the Venetians, to whom it had been pawned.[2] The entire chapel, by contrast, cost 40,000 livres to build and until it was complete the relics were housed at chapels at the Château de Vincennes and a specially-built chapel at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. In 1241, a piece of the True Cross was added, and other relics. Thus the building in Paris, consecrated 26 April 1248, was like a precious reliquary: even the stonework was painted, with medallions of saints and martyrs in the quatrefoils of the dado arcade, which was hung with rich textiles.[3]

At the same time, it reveals Louis' political and cultural ambition, with the imperial throne at Constantinople occupied by a mere Count of Flanders and with the Holy Roman Empire in uneasy disarray, to be the central monarch of western Christendom. Just as the Emperor could pass privately from his palace into Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, so now Louis could pass directly from his palace into the Sainte Chapelle.

The Saint Chapelle rises above the rooflines of the royal palace. Miniature by the Limbourg brothers, ca 1400

The Royal chapel was a prime exemplar of the newly developing culminating phase of Gothic architectural style called "Rayonnant" that achieved a sense of weightlessness. Its architect is generally thought to have been Pierre de Montereau. It stands squarely upon a lower chapel which served as parish church for all the inhabitants of the palace, which was the seat of government (see "palace"). The king was later granted sainthood by the Catholic Church as Saint Louis.

The most visually beautiful aspects of the chapel, and considered the best of their type in the world, are its stained glass for which the stonework is a delicate framework, and rose windows added to the upper chapel in the fifteenth century.

No designer-builder is directly mentioned in archives concerned with the construction, but the name of Pierre de Montreuil, who had rebuilt the apse of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis and completed the façade of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris is sometimes connected with the Sainte Chapelle.[4]

Ceiling of the Lower Chapel

Much of the chapel as it appears today is a recreation, although nearly two-thirds of the windows are authentic. The chapel suffered its most grievous destruction in the late eighteenth century, during the French Revolution, when the steeple and baldachin were removed, the relics dispersed (though some survive as the "relics of Sainte-Chapelle" at Notre Dame de Paris), and various reliquaries, including the grande châsse, were melted down. The Sainte-Chapelle was requisitioned as an archival depository in 1803. Two meters' worth of glass was removed to facilitate working light, and destroyed or loosed upon the market.[5] Its well-documented restoration, completed under the direction of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in 1855, was regarded as exemplary by contemporaries[6] and is faithful to the original drawings and descriptions of the chapel that survive.

The Sainte Chapelle has been a national historic monument since 1862.

A replica of the Sainte Chapelle can be found in Chicago, Illinois. The St. James Chapelle of Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, located on 103 E. Chestnut St, was built in the early 1900s under the direction of Cardinal George Mundelein in founding the high school seminary.

Gallery

The chapel's rose window.

Detail of a stained glass window.

Detail of a stained glass window depicting a baptism. (Now located at the Musée de Cluny.)

Sculpture.

Interior.

Interior.

Statue of Louis IX.

Access

Paris Métro
 located near the metro station: Cité.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The architectural structure was distinct from the transient capella regis, the "king's chapel" of the royal household that followed the movements of the court and from the personnel of which, as from his council, the king habitually appointed chancellors and bishops: see Robert Branner, "The Sainte-Chapelle and the Capella Regis in the Thirteenth Century", Gesta 10.1 (1971:19-22).
  2. ↑ Baldwin had appeared at the court of Louis in 1237 to ask for aid in defending Constantinople from the Greeks.
  3. ↑ Robert Branner, St Louis and the Court Style in Gothic Architecture 1966:8ff).
  4. ↑ Robert Branner saw in the design the hand of an unidentified master mason from Amiens (Branner 1966).
  5. ↑ The Philadelphia Museum of Art conserves three panels from the "Judith" window, identified by M. Caviness, "Three medallions of stained glass from the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris", Bulletin of the Philadelphia Museum of Art 62 (July-September 1967:249-55).
  6. ↑ Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire, s.v. "Restauration", "Vitrail"; a modern reassessment of the stained-glass restorations, in the context of the Gothic Revival, is in Alyce A. Jordan, "Rationalizing the Narrative: Theory and Practice in the Nineteenth-Century Restoration of the Windows of the Sainte-Chapelle", Gesta 37.2, Essays on Stained Glass in Memory of Jane Hayward (1918-1994) (1998:192-200).

Further reading

External links

Popular visitor attractions in Paris
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