Notre Dame Cathedral (Nine Centuries of History) by
Since its construction, Notre Dame Cathedral has played a central role in French cultural identity. In the wake of the tragic fire of 2019, questions of how to restore the fabric of this quintessential French monument are once more at the forefront. This all-too-prescient book, first published in French in 2013, takes a central place in the conversation. The Gothic cathedral par excellence, Notre Dame set the architectural bar in the competitive years of the third quarter of the twelfth century and dazzled the architects and aesthetes of the Enlightenment with its structural ingenuity. In the nineteenth century, the cathedral became the touchstone of a movement to restore medieval patrimony to its rightful place at the cultural heart of France: it was transformed into a colossal laboratory in which architects Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc anatomized structures, dismembered them, put them back, or built them anew--all the while documenting their work with scientific precision. Taking as their point of departure a three-dimensional laser scan of the cathedral created in 2010, architectural historians Dany Sandron and the late Andrew Tallon tell the story of the construction and reconstruction of Notre Dame in visual terms. With over a billion points of data, the scan supplies a highly accurate spatial map of the building, which is anatomized and rebuilt virtually. Fourteen double-page images represent the cathedral at specific points in time, while the accompanying text sets out the history of the building, addressing key topics such as the fundraising campaign, the construction of the vaults, and the liturgical function of the choir. Featuring 170 full-color illustrations and elegantly translated by Andrew Tallon and Lindsay Cook, Notre Dame Cathedral is an enlightening history of one of the world's most treasured architectural achievements.
Reims on Fire: War and Reconciliation between France and Germany by
As the site of royal coronations, Reims cathedral was a monument to French national history and identity. But after German troops bombed the cathedral during World War I, it took on new meaning. The French reimagined it as a martyr of civilization, as the rupture between the warring states. Despite a history of mutual respect, the bombing of the cathedral caused all social, scientific, artistic, and cultural ties between Germany and France to be severed for decades. The resulting battle of words and images stressed the differences between German Kultur and French civilisation. Artists and intelligentsia caricatured this entrenched cultural dichotomy, influencing portrayals of the two nations in the international press. This book explores the structure's breadth of meaning in symbolic, art historical, and historical arenas, including competing claims over the origins of Gothic art and architecture as national style and issues of monument preservation and restoration. It highlights how vulnerable art is during war, and how the destruction of nation-al monuments can set the tone for international conflict--once again a timely and pressing issue. Thomas W. Gaehtgens articulates how these nations began to mend their relationship in the decades after World War II, starting with the courageous vision of Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer, and how the cathedral of Reims was eventually transformed into a site of reconciliation and European unification.
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