Capitals

I visited the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church again (see previous posts here and here). The restoration works are almost finished. 

For some reason, this time I was especially struck by the capitals of the pillars. The carved capitals are all different and many of them have very medieval types of decorations. I understand that most of these are not the original ones, but were later copied. Some of the original ones can be found at the Cluny Museum (see posts here and here). Now, almost all of the ones in the church have again been restored and have very bright colours.

I think it’s interesting to see how these sometimes grotesque and not always very respectful illustrations were allowed, even encouraged, during the medieval times - see also some of the above ones. One can compare also with what I showed from the walls of the northern transept of the Saint Denis Basilica (see here).

Finally, some sun and light reflecting on the walls and pillars.  

A hidden church.

This church, so well hidden, dates from 1855 and is in a perfect Neo-Gothic style. Some modern buildings have later separated the entrance from the street. We are just in front of the “Le Bon Marché” department store (see previous post here).

The church is called Saint Ignace. It’s a Jesuit church dedicated to Saint Ignace, Ignatius de Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit movement. I already talked about the fact that Ignatius together with some friends decided about the creation of the “Society of Jesus” in 1534 in a little chapel on the slopes of Montmartre (see previous post here). Maybe we should remember that the present Pope is a Jesuit.

The church has a number of very nicely decorated chapels dedicated to different saints, one of course to Ignatius himself, see top picture.

The immediate neighbour to the church is a Jesuit university-level faculty, opened in 1974, today open to men and women, lay and religious.  

The Duckling Street

There is a little street which you may take during a walk between the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Church (see previous posts here) and the Saint-Sulpice Church (see previous posts here).

Actually, this little street hade the name of rue Saint-Soulpice, later rue Neuve-Saint-Sulpice, until the middle of the 17^th century, when it got its present name, rue des Canettes, meaning the Duckling Street, because of the decoration you can still find on the front of no. 18 – see top picture. You can find four ducklings in different positions.

In the preceding post I talked about Marcel Proust (1871-1922). I discovered that there is something to be said about him also here. A lady, Céleste Albaret (1894-1984) - who was Proust’s secretary, housekeeper, factotum, for the last 8 or 9 years of his life - later, with her husband (who originally was Proust’s favourite taxi driver) and daughter, were during some twenty or thirty years running the hotel which now is named  Hotel La Perle. She was very much appreciated by Proust and she was, with Proust’s brother, present when he died… Proust who knew that he was dying had wished her to be the one to close his eyes. Here we can see a photo of her and what obviously was the last page of “In Search of Lost Time” (see “end – “fin”) - she talks about it in an interview made in 1962 for the French Television - you can see it here - in French - minutes 41:40-55:30. And there is also a little poem he wrote to her.

Here are some other views from the little narrow street, with a number of shops and places for eating and drinking.

We can see that the street poles also here have been decorated by CyKlop. I wrote about him e.g. here.  … and on the corner of rue Guisarde, we can see another “duckling” dressed like the comedian and actor Coluche (1944-1986) – I talked about him here and here.   

Painting, drawing, sculpting...

Once more I was back at the rue de la Grande Chaumière. I have already posted about it e.g. here and here. I had an excellent lunch at a very reasonable price at the restaurant “Wajda”, which has been here since the 1930’s. (I very seldom – never – recommend a restaurant, but in this case I feel that I must – also for the nice welcome feeling).

The address is the same as the famous art school, “Académie Colarossi”, which was here between the 1870’s and the 1930’s. Among the students you may especially mention Camille Claudel, Alfons Mucha (later also teacher), Amedeo Modigliani and also his last partner, Jeanne Hébuterne... (and for my Swedish friends I can mention Carl Eldh, Jenny Nyström, Hanna Pauli, Eva Bonnier, Isaac Grünewald, Siri Derkert, Helmer Osslund…). That said, the school  has been closed for a long time, but you can still find the buildings in the courtyard (if you, as I was, are lucky enough to find someone to open the front door). Some teaching seems to continue. Someone created a funny face in the little garden.

Once I had been to the “Académie Colarossi”, I thought I had to visit also the other famous art school in the street, the “Académie de la Grande Chaumière”. This is where I found my top picture… Yes, this is another place where you can learn painting, drawing, sculpting. (You can read "ARS"; the only explanation I find is that you can translate it by "arts" - there are old expressions, used e.g. in music like "ars antiqua", meaning old art...) This school was created in 1909 and is still there (despite some threats). Among the teachers you can mention Ossip Zadkine, Antoine Bourdelle, Othon Friesz, Fernand Léger, André Lhote… and among the students Joan Miro, Alexander Calder, Tove Jansson, Eero Saarinen, Balthus, Louise Bourgeois, Serge Gainsbourg, Amedeo Modigliani (again), Serge Poliakoff, Bror Hjort, Alberto Giacometti…

I went into another building in the street, where we know that Gauguin lived for a short while, but the place is especially known as the last living place for Amedeo Modigliani, who moved tens of times during his Paris years (some difficulties to pay the rent), but got some financial help to settle down here the last two or three years of his life. This corresponds to the time he lived with his artist colleague, model, Jeanne Hébuterne. There was some interruption for a stay in the south of France (war times – WWI). We come to the dramatic end…I quote Wikipedia: “In 1920, after not hearing from him for several days, a neighbour checked on the family and found Modigliani in bed delirious and holding onto Hébuterne. A doctor was summoned, but little could be done because Modigliani was in the final stage of his disease, tubercular meningitis. He died on January 24, 1920, at the Hôpital de la Charité.”  I couldn’t get into the studio, in the  courtyard, but walking up the stairs in the front building I got a look at what was their studio, the three top windows on the left. The photo of the couple was probably taken here. I found a site where one has tried to artificially create what their studio may have looked like. We know that Jeanne, eight months pregnant of their second child, committed suicide two days after Amedeo’s death.

I mentioned Camille Claudel and that she took lessons at the "Académie Colarosso". Her family lived very close, rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and she took a studio together with friends at no. 117 of the same street. Yes, there are tens of studios in the courtyard, but which one was Camille's?

... and the cleaning progresses...

About a year ago I posted about the cleaning and restoration of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Church (see here). Then about half was done. Now the other “half” has just been finished. The colours are splendid, some may think almost “too much”… but soon time, dust, dirt, pollution… will do its “work” !

However, the aisles are still to be taken care of. The remarkable paintings which you normally find on the walls here are also taken away for restoration.

Entrance doors

The entrance doors to some older buildings in Paris are often nicely decorated – I have already made a few posts, e.g. here. I found some quite spectacular examples the other day on rue de Grenelle, nos 67 and 69, two rather typical Haussmannian buildings. Both entrances, identical, seem to be newly repainted, no. 67 in a black glossy paint, no. 69 in a grey matt paint. Well, it may be a question of taste… I prefer the grey one.

This decoration has been delivered by the famous foundries, “Val d’Osne”, created in 1835, situated in a Paris suburb and in operation, with some changed names, until the 1980’s. At the bottom of this post I show some other examples of their production, very much linked to the Paris image.

So, here some illustrations of the grey no. 69 doors – see also top picture…

… and here some illustrations of the black glossy version at no. 67.

… and finally some illustrations of metro entrances (one model actually named “Val d’Osne”), the Wallace fountains, the decoration of the Alexandre III bridge… all produced by “Val d’Osne”.

Clean...

I wrote about the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Church almost ten years ago (see here) and I will not repeat the story about the church and the abbey, but… a few words: The present church, which was part of the great abbey is basically from the 11^th and the 12^th centuries, but a number of modifications have of course taken place during the following centuries and the building suffered seriously from the Revolution. During the 19^th century, Victor Baltard (1805-74) – today especially remembered for the disappeared “Les Halles” (previous posts here) - was in charge of a restoration and he engaged Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-64), assisted by Alexandre Denuelle (1818-79) for the decoration of the walls – most of the walls were thus covered by paintings, but, lately, you could hardly see this paint work anymore under the dirt.  

Cleaning and restoration of the walls and ceilings of about half of the church have just been finished, partly thanks to sponsoring by some of today's artists. We will obviously have to wait for at least another three years, before the whole church will be neat. On some of the pictures below you can clearly see the difference between the renovated and the not cleaned and restored parts.

Also renovated, you can find the impressive tomb of John II Casimir Vasa (1609-72), a man with a surprising career. King of Poland 1648-68, he abdicated and became abbot of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés during his last four years. (One could perhaps mention that his father was King Sigismund III, grandson of Gustav I of Sweden.) Only John Casimir’s heart remains here; he’s buried in Krakow, then the capital of Poland.

What do these gentlemen have in common?

What do these gentlemen have in common? They are Swedish and they have a street or a square named after them in Paris. After the recent inauguration of Place Strindberg (see previous post), a friend asked me who are the other Swedes who have been honoured? So here I try to answer.  Have I forgotten someone?
   

Alfred Nobel, 1833-96, may not need any long biography here… dynamite of course, but as an inventor he held 355 different patents. He lived in Paris 1873-91, was fluent in French (and a number of other languages) and kept his Paris home until his death – in San Remo in 1896. His will was written in Paris in 1895 - on a desk that you may still find at the Swedish Club in Paris (see previous post). To honour his name, he has got a very modest little street, rather some stairs, on the northern slopes of Montmartre. Why there and why so modest? (Paris 18)

Raoul Wallenberg, 1912 - ??, was an architect, diplomat … and is especially known for having saved tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary, while working in Budapest as a Swedish special envoy. He was arrested by a Red Army intelligence service in January 1945 and what happened to him then is still unknown.  Considering the number of avenues, streets, places, monuments that you can find worldwide to his honour, it may be a bit surprising that he has got a street named after him in Paris only in 2007 and far from the city centre, even on the other side of the “périphérique”. (Paris 19)

Carl Linnaeus, or Carl von Linné, 1707-78, is mostly known for the “binomial nomenclature” used in zoology and botany. One example is the “linnaea”, or twinflower, his favourite flower, officially with the name “Linnaea borealis”. Linné had no very close relations with Paris – he made a short visit in 1737 and then met with the French naturalist Antoine de Jussieu, member of the famous botanist Jussieu family. It is then quite “natural” that Linné has a street named after him – already in 1865, linking one of the entrances to the “Jardin des Plantes” and the “Place Jussieu”. On one street corner you can find an imposing fountain, dedicated to another naturalist, Georges Cuvier.  (Paris 6)

Jacob Berzelius, 1779-1848, was a chemist, considered to be one of the founders of modern chemistry. He worked with atomic weights and developed the modern chemical formula notation (for example CH2O for glucose, twice as many hydrogen atoms as carbon and oxygen). He was also the first person to make a distinction between organic and inorganic compounds, he invented the term "protein".... His portrait here is from just before the end of his life (1848) and is a daguerreotype, which had just been invented by Louis Daguerre. The Paris street, which had the Berzelius name already in 1864, is not in a (until further) very fancy area. It's a long street and after a bend it actually changes name to Passage Berzelius. (Paris 17)

Raoul Nordling, 1881-1962, was a businessman (basically in paper) and a diplomat - Swedish consular general in Paris since 1926. Today one remembers him especially for his role before the liberation of Paris in 1944 when he negotiated with the German commander, von Choltitz, in order to "save" Paris despite some instructions to demolish it given by Hitler. The liberation of some 3.000 political prisoners was also obtained. Orson Wells played Nordling's role in the 1966 movie "Is Paris burning?" and there is a more recent movie from 2014, "Diplomacy", adapted from a theatre play. After the fall of Nazi Germany, Choltitz spent two years in prison. Nordling was awarded a medal by the French State, which he passed over to Choltitz, recognizing him as the real hero. Nordling has a square named after him. (Paris 11)

Gustaf V, 1858-1950, was King of Sweden from 1907 until his death. There may be some thoughts about his sometimes rather pro-German and an often rather conservative attitude... but during his reign he accepted a stripped monarchy, a universal and equal suffrage (including for women from 1919). He was an avid hunter and sportsman and even represented Sweden as tennis-player ("Mr G") during younger years. He was married to Victoria (of Baden) and they had three sons. Victoria died already in 1930 after having spent many years abroad - officially for health reasons - in Italy (Capri - Axel Munthe). Gustaf's name was given to this "avenue" in 1951 - no cars around. (Paris 16)

August Strindberg, 1849-1912, very recently got his name on a Paris street sign. I wrote a lot about it already in some recent posts, here and here. (Paris 6)

Now, the question is what about Swedish women? Nobody so far... possibly with the exception of Queen Astrid, born Swedish Princess, married to the Belgian King Leopold III. She died in a car accident in 1935, 30 years old. Since 1936 she has had a square in her name, Place de la Reine Astrid. This is where you find a statue which was a gift by the Belgian State in recognition of the Belgian-French friendship during WWI. (I already wrote about it here.) (Paris 8)