Preserving and Enhancing SAINT SULPICE

Had Dan Brown wrote his Da Vinci Code today, his hero Robert Langdon, would probably be distracted from his quest by what is outside on the top of the church’s North tower. Sitting up there, at 60 meters (approx. 200ft) above the ground are the new stone replicas of the four evangelists. The statues by Boizot and Mouchy, had contemplated the madness below since the late XVIIIth Century. With no respect to the Beaux Arts Professor titles Boizot and Mouzy each had, those statues were faced with the same fate any other statue on a church or a castle suffered since the French revolution. They were first amputated of any symbol of the former ‘tyranny’ whether religious or political. And each evangelist was separated from his symbol: the lion, the angel, the bull and the eagle were all chopped off. The second strike was insidious. Pollution slowly ate up the features of the evangelists, leaving them with a sinister mask and erasing all the decorative elements on the façade. As a result, the crafting of the replicas required imagining and recreating all that had disappeared.  For close ups, go here.

The evangelists’ replicas were carved right there at the foot of the North tower, where a major construction site was set up in 2006 and includes an 85 meter high (approx. 280 ft) crane. Actually Saint Sulpice is undergoing a major renovation project decided in 2004. Approximately 40 “Compagnons” work on the project. Officially known as “Les Compagnons du Devoir,” Compagnons were labeled the builders of cathedrals. Compagnons have inherited a tradition that span centuries. Today, they perpetuate the tradition and recruit among those for whom regular high-school is not the preferred stepping stone into adulthood.

Those 40 Compagnons work under the supervision of Daniel Ménard architect for the agency ‘Monuments Historiques.’ The mission of ‘Monuments Historiques’ is to preserve and enhance the monuments, so that tourists and visitors may discover and learn more about the history and the architecture of the monument. The Saint Sulpice area is a fun and lively neighborhood. Now, there is more than simply fun and excitement. Certainly, Lord Byron’s Childe Harold, 1817, does not apply:

In Venice Tasso’s echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone – but Beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fade – but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy.