La
Sainte-Chapelle ( ) 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.
History
The Sainte-Chapelle, the palatine chapel 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 swiped relics, the saintly Louis bought his
precious relics of the Passion, purchased from the Latin emperor at Constantinople
, Baudoin
II, for the exorbitant sum of 135,000 livres, which was paid to the Venetians, to
whom it had been pawned. 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.
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 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
Peter of
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.
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. Its well-documented restoration, completed
under the direction of
Eugène
Viollet-le-Duc in 1855, was regarded as exemplary by
contemporaries 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
George Cardinal Mundelein in
founding the high school
seminary.
Gallery
Image:Sainte Chapelle - Rosace.jpg|The chapel's
rose window.Image:Sainte Chapelle - Details
Vitrail Mur Sud.jpg|Detail of a stained glass window.Image:Baptism
Sainte-Chapelle MNMA Cl23717.jpg|Detail of a stained glass window
depicting a baptism.
(Now located at the Musée de
Cluny
.)Image:Sainte Chapelle - Detail Sculpture
Mur
Nord.jpg|Sculpture.Image:Saintechapelle8f.jpg|Interior.Image:Saintechapelle7b.jpg|Interior.Image:SaintLouisSainteChapelle.jpg|Statue
of Louis IX.
Access
See also
Notes
- 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).
- Baldwin had appeared at the court of Louis in 1237 to ask for
aid in defending Constantinople from the Greeks.
- Robert
Branner, St Louis and the Court Style in Gothic
Architecture 1966:8ff).
- Prof. Robert Branner saw in the design the hand of
an unidentified master mason from Amiens (Branner,
- 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).
- 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
- F. Gebelin, La Sainte Chapelle et la Conciergerie
(Paris) 1937.
External links