Notre Dame: A Lightness Never Seen

Over the years, I’ve been a regular visitor to Notre Dame; I’ve been there on nearly every trip to Paris over a 30-year period. I’ve been to concerts, admired art, and felt a connection to a distant past—but always in a space that seemed half-lit and imbued with mystery.

On my first visit since the 2019 fire and the restoration just completed, all the connection remained, but the light of the fully-cleaned stone and updated lighting gave it, as titled above, a lightness never seen.

The two images above, from a 2014 TravelGumbo blog, show some of the visible difference. Below, the fully-cleaned facade, and views from the 1960s and in 2012 after a partial cleaning.

As you can see, I was not alone in my eagerness to visit; this was in March, and three months after the re-opening, there were still crowds, both inside and out. To my surprise, although every time I checked the reservation system for visits had no spots available, the ‘no reservations’ line outside, although it wound around and around and around, never stopped moving. On both visits, I was in within 20 minutes.

My first visit was on a Sunday; while crowds of visitors circulated along the outer aisles, a mass was being said at the center. With its modern altar table and the re-burnished wood of the choir stalls, it made quite a picture—and the lighted spaces behind the worshipers were stunning, as if one could suddenly see much further.

After the fire, there was a spate of talk about rebuilding in more modern modes, even fanciful ideas of glass roofs, rotating steeples and swimming pools, but in the end popular opinion and officialdom all agreed that it should be ‘as before,’ which is a questionable concept when you’re talking about a building that had seen 800 years of constant alteration.

But even if we take ‘as before’ to mean 2019, or the mid-19th century status left by Viollet-le-Duc, there is certainly change; there is more lighting as well as light; the cleaning of the stones used methods not available even 70 years ago to get back to the original honey beige that had darkened over the centuries. In the end, the effect is both enduringly ancient and stunningly new.

Some things, of course, actually are new. Perhaps the most stunning is the new reliquary designed by Sylvaine Dubuisson to hold one of Notre Dame’s most treasured relics, the Crown of Thorns that is claimed to have been worn by Jesus. Made of marble and cedar, it stands at the very end of the cathedral; its predecessor had been kept in Notre Dame’s treasury rather than in open spaces.

Also new is the baptismal font near the main entrance, designed by Guillaume Bardet, who also designed the altar table seen in the mass photo.

A less-welcome new addition is also near the front doors: A full-scale gift and souvenir shop that’s located just before the exit—just like every museum does.

Not new at all are some of my old favorites, including the tomb of Bishop Matifort, who died in 1304; his effigy is the only remaining medieval funerary sculpture in the church. I’ve always thought of him as the Rhinestone Bishop.

Archbishop Darboy, who appears to be giving a lecture about stained glass, is often mistaken for Thomas Jefferson—even by Google’s image search tool.

In the side chapels, there are interesting selections of art, with older and more recent works confronting each other in careful selections; a far cry from the worries of some who heard ‘modern art’ as a sign that tradition was being abandoned. Actually, over centuries there were traditions of adding new art; some guilds made an annual presentation each May.

The painting of Saint Paul blinding a false prophet, above, was just such a contribution in 1650 by the Confrérie Sainte-Anne. It was moved to the Louvre in 1962, and is now on loan back to Notre Dame, paired with Composition 1982 by Zao Wou-Ki; his work has been rendered as a tapestry by the state-owned Gobelins workshop.

Nearby, another May painting on loan from the Louvre, The Predictions of the Prophete Agabus to Saint Paul, 1687, shares space with George Braque’s Composition with Birds, rendered as a Gobelin tapestry in 1872. The stained glass between then is the work of Edouard Didron, who worked closely with Viollet-le-Duc.

Because the very shapes and spaces of a large Gothic cathedral are so complex, almost every way you turn offers new contrasts and discoveries, all the more so because the new lightness renders views in far more variations of color and light than before.

Even the exterior detailing seems to take on more variation of tone, even without color. And color, lots of it, would have been there in Notre Dame’s first centuries. Unpainted stone is the fashion of a later age, including ours.

What has been done in five years to restore and renovate Notre Dame is certainly amazing—but, as is clear above, more remains to be done, although mostly on the exterior. Also still to come are new gardens and open spaces at both ends. But don’t wait for that—visit now!