architecture and the historical imagination
Hailed as one of the key theoreticians of modernism, Eugène-Emmanuel
Viollet-le-Duc was also the most renowned restoration architect of his age,
a celebrated medieval archaeologist and a fervent champion of Gothic
revivalism. He published some of the most influential texts in the history of
modern architecture such as the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française
du XIe au XVIe siècle and Entretiens sur l’architecture, but also studies on
warfare, geology and racial history. Martin Bressani expertly traces Viollet-leDuc’s complex intellectual development, mapping the attitudes he adopted
toward the past, showing how restoration, in all its layered meaning, shaped
his outlook. Through his life journey, we follow the route by which the
technological subject was born out of nineteenth-century historicism.
Martin Bressani is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director
at the School of Architecture, McGill University, Canada.
To my wife Claude Jean
Architecture and the
Historical Imagination
Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, 1814–1879
Martin Bressani
© Martin Bressani 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Martin Bressani has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to
be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited
Ashgate Publishing Company
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Bressani, Martin.
Architecture and the historical imagination : Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,
1814-1879 / by Martin Bressani.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-3340-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-4088-4 (ebook) - ISBN 978-1-4724-4089-1 (epub)
1. Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel, 1814-1879--Psychology. 2. Architecture and
history. I. Title.
NA1053.V7B74 2014
720.92--dc23
2013037795
ISBN 9780754633402 (hbk)
ISBN 9781472440884 (ebk)
III
ISBN 9781472440891 (epub)
Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited,
at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD
Contents
List of Illustrations
ix
Translation and Abbreviations
xxi
Prefacexxiii
Acknowledgmentsxxvii
Part I: Restoration and Loss
1
Mourning
At Notre-Dame
Double Bind
Incorporation
Doubling
2
3
3
11
24
30
Architecture Painted
45
Drawing the Past
History in Color
Historical Drama
Italian Interlude
La poésie sauvage
45
53
58
62
73
Part II: The Gothic Reborn
3
History Re-enacted
4
Return to the Gothic
The Question of Vézelay
Restoration and the Referential Illusion
Vézelay Repaired
Reviving the Gothic
Joining the Revivalists
The Gothic as Excess
93
93
99
103
113
129
129
133
vi
architecture and the historical imagination
Archaeology Practiced
The Sainte-Clotilde Controversy
Revivalism versus Modernity
5
The Gothic Narrated
Introït
Viollet-le-Duc’s Account of Gothic Construction:
A Brief Overview
Taxonomy versus Narration
140
145
151
165
165
166
172
Part III: The Gothic Disseminated
6
Toward Empire
Identification Works
Unity as the Aftermath of Conflict
The Te Deum Ceremony of January 1852
7
The Gothic Put to Use The Second Empire and the Launching of the Dictionnaire
raisonné
The Dictionnaire raisonné as a Publishing Venture
The Dictionnaire raisonné as Graphic Environment
Arousing Curiosity: The Figures of the Dictionnaire raisonné
Text and Image
The demi-effet
Drawing as Restoration
8
Physiology of the Ancient Architecture of France
Architecture versus Construction
The Ideal Cathedral
Compulsion to Repeat
191
191
201
210
223
223
228
232
239
241
247
249
267
267
277
288
Part IV: The Gothic as Will
9
War rue Bonaparte: 1856–1864
305
Omnipotence
At the Beaux-Arts in 1857
The coup of 1863–1864
305
313
315
10
333
Instinct and Race
Instinct and Memory
Race as an Aesthetic of Revenance
333
345
contents
11
Style
Style versus Styles
Shaping Objects
The Imprint of an Idea
Style and Race
vii
381
381
382
387
392
Part V: Transgressions into Modernity
12
Locomotives and Iron
Curiosities, Ugliness and Transgression
Mechanical Fantasies
Iron Historicized
Iron through the Lens of History
407
407
415
423
426
13
At War
451
14
Late Works
465
The Geography of Time
The Massif du Mont-Blanc
465
478
15
499
Conclusion: Autogenic Rebirth
Bibliography527
Index567
This page has been left blank intentionally
Illustrations
1
Mourning
1.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. View of
existing conditions of the Antique
Theatre at Taormina. 1836. Ink wash,
graphite and gouache. 33.3 × 170.5
cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture
/ Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
1.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Restored
view of the Antique Theatre at
Taormina. 1840. Watercolor. 76.6 ×
133.5 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY
1.3 The Viollet-le-Duc and Delécluze
family house at 1 rue Chabanais, Paris.
Photo by the author
1.4 Aimé Millet (after a watercolor
by Étienne Delécluze), Portrait of
Mrs. Sophie and Eugénie Delécluze.
Undated. Charcoal and gouache.
From Paul Gout, Viollet-le-Duc. Sa vie,
son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 1914. Courtesy
Bibliothèque des livres rares et
collections spéciales, Université de
Montréal.
1.5 Achille Devéria. Portrait of
Prosper Mérimée. c. 1832. Heliogravure
by E. Capron. From Maurice Tourneux,
Prosper Mérimée, ses portraits, ses dessins,
sa bibliothèque, 1879. Private collection
1.6 Raymond-Auguste-Quinsac
Monvoisin. Portrait of Emmanuel
Louis-Nicolas Viollet-le-Duc. Undated.
Oil on canvas. From Paul Gout, Violletle-Duc. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine,
1914. Courtesy Bibliothèque des livres
rares et collections spéciales, Université
de Montréal
1.7 Lzinka de Mirbel, Miniature
portrait of Étienne Delécluze. 1832.
Watercolor. From Paul Gout, Viollet-leDuc. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 1914.
Courtesy Bibliothèque des livres rares
et collections spéciales, Université de
Montréal
1.8 Étienne Delécluze, Violletle-Duc as a young boy holding his
paint brush. 1819. Oil on canvas.
From Pierre-Marie Auzas, Eugène
Viollet-le-Duc 1814–1879, 1979.
Private collection
1.9 Raymond-Auguste-Quinsac
Monvoisin. Portrait of Viollet-le-Duc.
1834. Graphite. From Pierre-Marie
Auzas, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1814–1879,
1979. Private collection
x
2
architecture and the historical imagination
Architecture Painted
2.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. View of
Meaux. 18 June 1832. Graphite. 30.2
× 22.3 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY
2.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. View of
Rouen. 1832. Watercolor. 19.5 × 22.3 cm.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.3 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. View of
the north side of the abbey of Mont
Saint-Michel. 1835. Pen and graphite.
29 × 43 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY
2.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Escarpment
of Mont Saint-Michel. 1835. Watercolor.
29 × 42 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource,
NY
2.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. View of
the Stair of the Château des Tuileries.
Watercolor. 60.0 × 47.0 cm. Musée des
Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Photo credit:
Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at
Art Resource, NY
2.6 Félix Duban. Architectural fantasy
in the style of Pompeii. 1856. Graphite
and watercolor. 38.0 × 48.0 cm. Musée
d’Orsay, Paris. © RMN-Grand Palais /
Art Resource, NY
2.7 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Restored View
of the old Chambre des Comptes in Paris,
built in 1499 and burnt in 1737. The
monument is shown as it was during the
turmoil of 1572. 1836. Watercolor. 62.0 ×
95.5 cm. Former collection of the Duc de
Nemours. Private collection
2.8 Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury.
The Assassination of Brion, Tutor of the
Prince of Conti at the St. Bartholomew’s
Day Massacre, 24 August 1572. 1833. Oil
on canvas. 164.0 × 130.0 cm. Musée du
Louvre. Photo credit: Erich Lessing /
Art Resource, NY
2.9 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Polychrome
carpentry of the Cathedral in Messina,
Sicily. 1836. Watercolor, ink, graphite,
gouache and gilding. 99.2 × 65.4 cm.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.10 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Capella reale
in Palermo. 1836. Watercolor. 48.5 × 32.5
cm. From Le voyage d’Italie d’Eugène
Viollet-le-Duc 1836–1837, 1987. Private
collection
2.11 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Interior of
Sienna Cathedral. 1836. Watercolor and
graphite. 47.2 × 43.5. MAP. © Ministère
de la Culture / Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais /
Art Resource, NY
2.12 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Lateral
portal of Cathedral of Palermo. 1836.
Watercolor, ink and gouache. 45.6
× 27.6 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY
2.13 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Facade
of the Doge’s Palace, Venice. 1836.
Watercolor. 61.5 × 133.0 cm. MAP. ©
Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand
Palais / Art Resource, NY
illustrations
2.14 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Bottom of
the Azun Valley taken from the Pourges
Mountain, Hautes-Pyrénées. 1833.
Watercolor. 20.5 × 27.3 cm. MAP. ©
Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand
Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.15 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Bottom of
the Cirque de Gavarnie. 1833. Ink wash
and gouache. 22.0 × 28.0 cm. MAP.
© CNAC/MNAM/Dist. RMN-Grand
Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.16 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Penne de
Lhéris. 1833. Watercolor. 21.8 × 28.5 cm.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.17 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Temple
of Junon Lecine at Agrigento. 1836.
Graphite. 24.2 × 32.8 cm. MAP. ©
Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand
Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.18 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Views of the
frigidarium of the Baths of Caracalla.
Graphite, wash and gouache. 28.4 × 44.7
cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.19 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Restored
view of the interior of the Colosseum.
1837. Watercolor. 21.0 × 33.4 cm.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.20 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Upper crater
of Etna. 1836. Watercolor, gouache
and graphite. 32.6 × 51.0 cm. MAP. ©
Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand
Palais / Art Resource, NY
3
xi
History Re-enacted
3.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Untitled
decorative border. From Baron Taylor,
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques en
ancienne France, Picardie, vol. 1, 1835.
Lithograph by Thierry Frères. Private
collection
3.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Untitled
decorative border. From Baron Taylor,
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques en
ancienne France, Picardie, vol. 3, 1845.
Lithograph by Thierry Frères. Private
collection
3.3 Comparison of the pinnacles of
the southern transept of Notre-Dame in
Paris, before and after Viollet-le-Duc’s
restoration. From Achille Carlier, “Le
travestissement de Notre-Dame par
Viollet-le-Duc,” in Les Pierres de France,
n. 2, March, April, May 1937. Private
collection
3.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Various
caricatures. 1852. Pen and ink. 27.5
× 36.7 cm. Bibliothèque de l’INHA,
Collections Jacques Doucet, Paris. ©
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
3.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Aubusson
carpet of a design copied from a
motif in the chapel of the cathedral
of Notre-Dame in Paris. Undated.
Flat-woven wool. 600.0 × 459.0 cm.
Private collection. Courtesy Carlton
Hobbs LLC
3.6 Portrait of Viollet-le-Duc.
Daguerreotype. 1840. © Philippe Berthé
—Centre des monuments nationaux
3.7 Félix Duban. Lateral section
towards the east end of the SainteChapelle. Detail from Polychromy of the
west and east ends of the Sainte-Chapelle.
xii
architecture and the historical imagination
1844. Ink, watercolor and wash. 92.5 ×
62.2 cm. © Bernard Acloque—Centre
des monuments nationaux
3.8 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Notre-Dame.
Southern facade. 1843. Watercolor. 88.0
× 14.6 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource,
NY
3.9 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Present
condition. Church of La Madeleine in
Vézelay, department of the Yonne. 1840.
Watercolor. 34.5 × 134.5 cm. MAP. ©
Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand
Palais / Art Resource, NY
3.10 Abbey church of La Madeleine in
Vézelay. General view of nave looking
west. Photograph by Gerard Franceshi.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
3.11 Abbey church of La Madeleine
in Vézelay. View of the vaults in the
narthex. Photograph by Camille Enlart.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
4
Reviving the Gothic
4.1 Louis Boulanger. Sabbath Round.
1829. Oil on canvas. 162.0 × 121.0
cm. Maison de Victor Hugo, Paris. ©
Maisons de Victor Hugo / Roger-Viollet
4.2 Pierre-Luc Charles Cicéri. Stage
set for the “Ballet of the Nuns” in
Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le Diable as
designed by scenery painter Pierre Luc
Charles Cicéri and stage designer Henri
Duponchel for the premiere production
at the Paris Opera’s Salle Le Peletier
in 1831. Opera Garnier, Paris. © Erich
Lessing / Art Resource, NY
4.3 Attributed to Henri le Secq. New
Sacristy at Notre-Dame. Published
1851–1853. Salted paper print from
waxed paper negative. 23.9 × 33.4
cm. Pl. 4 in Paris Photographique,
a photographic album edited by
Blanquart-Evrard. Collection Centre
Canadien d’Architecture / Canadian
Centre for Architecture, Montréal
4.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Courmont
House, rue de Berlin [now rue de
Liège]. April 15, 1846. Graphite and
watercolor. 16.0 × 32.0 cm. Private
collection
4.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Facade on the
rue de Berlin [now rue de Liège]. 1846.
Ink and wash. 28.0 × 32.0 cm. Private
collection
4.6 Comparison of the facades of an
apartment building on rue Taitbout in
Paris by architect Jean-Baptiste Lassus
(above) and Courmont House on rue de
Liège in Paris by E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc
(below). Both designed in 1846. Photos
by the author
4.7 Franz Christian Gau. Basilica of
Sainte-Clotilde, Paris. 1846–1857. Photo
by the author
5
The Gothic Narrated
5.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Early
Romanesque vaulting system. Wood
engraving by E. Guillaumot. Fig. 3
of “Construction,” from Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 4, 1859.
Private collection
5.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Early form of
the Gothic rib vault. Unsigned wood
illustrations xiii
engraving. Fig. 21 of “Construction,”
from Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture,
vol. 4, 1859. Private collection
5.3 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. The system
of the flying buttress. Wood engraving
by E. Guillaumot. Fig. 20 of “De la
construction des édifices religieux en
France,” Annales archéologiques, vol. 6,
1847. Private collection
5.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Laon Cathedral,
Center of the Crossing. Wood engraving
by E. Guillaumot. Figs. 36–37 of “De la
construction des édifices religieux en
France,” Annales archéologiques, vol. 6,
1847. Private collection
6
Toward Empire
6.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Division of
France, by styles, during the eleventh and
twelfth centuries. Steel engraving by
F. Penel. Pl. 14 from Revue générale de
l’architecture et des travaux publics, vol.
12, 1852. Private collection
6.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Geological
division of France. Steel engraving by
F. Penel. Pl. 15 from Revue générale de
l’architecture et des travaux publics, vol.
12, 1852. Private collection
6.3 15 August anniversary. Military
pantomime on the Champ de Mars. The
siege of Silistrie, Crimean War. Wood
engraving. From L’Illustration, tome
24, n. 599, vol. 17, 1854. Private
collection
6.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Decoration
of the Church of Notre-Dame at the
occasion of the Te Deum ceremony.
Engraving by Léon Gaucherel. Pl. 3
from Revue générale de l’architecture et
des travaux publics, vol. 10, 1852. Private
collection
6.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Exterior
decoration of Notre-Dame for the
[Te Deum] ceremony of the 1st
January 1852. Wood engraving. From
L’Illustration, tome 19, n. 462, vol. 19,
1852. Private collection
7
The Gothic Put to Use
7.1 Charles Marville. Portrait of
E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. 1865. Photograph.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
7.2 Title page from E.-E. Violletle-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture, vol. 1, 1858. Wood
engraving vignette by E. Guillaumot.
Private collection
7.3 Title page from E.-E. Viollet-leDuc, Essai sur l’architecture militaire
au moyen âge, 1854. Unsigned wood
engraving vignette. Private collection
7.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Stone arch
and floor construction system (left) and
structural cross-section of the Château
of Haut-Kœnigsbourg, near Sélestat,
Alsace (right). Wood engravings by A.
Pégard et H. Lavoignat. Figs. 129 and
130 of “Construction,” from Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 4, 1859.
Private collection
7.5 View of the terminal chapel in Auxerre
Cathedral with the free-standing columns
in front. Unsigned wood engraving.
From Arcisse de Caumont, Abécédaire ou
rudiment d’archéologique, 1851. Courtesy
McGill University Library. Rare Books
and Special Collections
7.6 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Cathedral
at Auxerre, Chapel of the Virgin. Wood
engraving by E. Guillaumot. Figs. 33–34
xiv
architecture and the historical imagination
of “De la construction des monuments
religieux en France,” Annales
archéologiques, vol. 7, 1847. Private
collection
7.7 C. Mackenzie. Sedilia and Piscina,
Wymington, Bedfordshire. Wood
engraving by Orlando Jewitt. From
John Henry Parker, Glossary of Terms
used in Grecian, Roman, Italian and Gothic
Architecture, vol. 1, 5th edition, 1850.
Courtesy McGill University Library.
Rare Books and Special Collections
7.8 Robert Willis. Impost, Whitby
Abbey, Yorkshire. Wood engraving
by Orlando Jewitt. From John Henry
Parker, Glossary of Terms used in Grecian,
Roman, Italian and Gothic Architecture,
vol. 1, 5th edition, 1850. Courtesy
McGill University Library. Rare Books
and Special Collections
7.9 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Pillar base
at Laon Cathedral. Wood engraving
by A. Pégard. Fig. 37 of “Base,” from
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, vol.
2, 1856. Private collection
7.10 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Detail of
hanging keystone at arch intersection.
Unsigned wood engraving. Fig. 46 of
“Voûte,” from Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture, vol. 9, 1868. Private
collection
7.11 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Manuscript
page for “De la construction des
monuments religieux en France,”
Annales archéologogiques, vol. 6, 1847.
Private collection
7.12 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Manuscript
of the first page of the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 1, 1854.
© Archives départementales de l’Oise,
64 J 1. Cliché Stéphane Vermeiren
7.13 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Exploded
view of the springing point of the arch.
Wood engraving by E. Guillaumot. Fig.
48 of “Construction,” from Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 4, 1859.
Private collection
7.14 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Arch
springers. Wood engraving by E.
Guillaumot. Figs. 29, 30 and 31 of “De
la construction des édifices religieux en
France,” Annales archéologiques, vol. 6,
1847. Private collection
7.15 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Exploded
view of the springing point of the arch.
Wood engraving by A. L. Fig. 6 of
“Appareil,” from Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture, vol. 1, 1854. Private
collection
7.16 Nicolas-Henri Jacob. Exploded
view of the human skull. Lithograph.
Pl. 30 from Jean-Marc Bourgery, Traité
complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, vol.
1, 1832. Reproduced by permission
of the Osler Library of the History of
Medicine, McGill University
7.17 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Views of
left (A, B) and right (C, D) plate armor
spaulders, each rotated to show front
and back. Unsigned wood engraving.
Fig. 14 of “Spallière,” Dictionnaire
raisonné du mobilier, vol. 6, 1875.
Private collection
8 Physiology of the Ancient
Architecture of France
8.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. France
at the end of the tenth century.
Unsigned wood engraving. Fig. 1
of “Architecture,” from Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 1, 1854.
Private collection
illustrations
8.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Carolingian
masonry wall construction.
Unsigned wood engraving. Fig. 1 of
“Construction,” from Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 4, 1859.
Private collection
8.3 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Arch
springers at column capital. Wood
engraving by H. Lavoignat. Fig. 49bis
of “Construction,” from Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 4, 1859.
Private collection
8.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Comparative
illustrations of the evolution of the
column capital. Wood engravings by E.
Guillaumot, Guillaumot the Younger
and A. Pégard. Figs. 45, 46 and 46bis of
“Chapiteau,” from Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture, vol. 2, 1856. Private
collection
8.5 Nicolas-Henri Jacob. Frontispiece
from Jean-Marc Bourgery, Traité complet
de l’anatomie de l’homme, vol. 1, 1832.
Lithograph. Reproduced by permission
of the Osler Library of the History of
Medicine, McGill University
8.6 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Ideal
thirteenth-century cathedral
based on Reims Cathedral. Wood
engraving by H. Lavoignat. Fig. 18 of
“Cathédrale,” from Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture, vol. 2, 1856. Private
collection
8.7 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Facade of
Notre-Dame of Paris. Steel engraving
by Claude Sauvageot. Pl. XIV from
Entretiens sur l’architecture, vol. 1, 1863.
Private collection
8.8 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Cathedral
of Clermont. Facade project. 1864. Ink
and wash. 120.0 × 65.5 cm. MAP. ©
xv
Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand
Palais / Art Resource, NY
9
War rue Bonaparte: 1856–1864
9.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Imperial
Academy of Music. Opera Project [Paris].
Perspective View. 1860–1861. Ink,
wash and watercolor. 65.0 × 91.3 cm.
MAP. © Philippe Berthé—Centre des
monuments nationaux
9.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Country House.
Hunting lodge near Creil (Oise). Undated.
Steel engraving by Claude Sauvageot.
Pl. 158 from Viollet-le-Duc and Félix
Narjoux, Habitations modernes, 1875–
1877. Private collection
9.3 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Apartment
Building in Paris. Steel engraving by
E. Maurage. Pl. 63 from Viollet-le-Duc
and Félix Narjoux, Habitations modernes,
1875–1877. Private collection
9.4 Adolphe-Victor GeoffroyDechaume. E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc in his
Study. Bas-relief adorning the base
of Viollet-le-Duc’s bust by the same
sculptor. 1882. Plaster. 43.0 × 32.0 × 5.0
cm. © Fonds Geoffroy-Dechaume /
Musée des monuments français / Cité
de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris
9.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Viollet-leDuc’s cat playing with toy soldiers. Ink.
9.7 × 12.0 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource,
NY
10
Instinct and Race
10.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Head of a
gargoyle, Sainte-Chapelle. Graphite.
xvi
architecture and the historical imagination
16.6 × 12.5 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource,
NY
10.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Gargoyles
at the top of the south tower of NotreDame, Paris. Photo by the author
10.3 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Figure of
Christ for the Maître-Hotel at NotreDame, Paris. 1866. Graphite, wash and
gouache. 92.5 × 59.5 cm. Collection
Poussièlgue-Rusand, MAP. © Ministère
de la Culture / Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais /
Art Resource, NY
10.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Study
for a monstrance. Graphite and ink.
84.5 × 43.5 cm. Undated. Collection
Poussièlgue-Rusand, MAP. © Ministère
de la Culture / Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais /
Art Resource, NY
10.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Lectern for
Notre-Dame. 1868. Watercolor and ink.
65.0 × 48.5 cm. MAP. Photo: Daniel
Arnaudet. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
10.6 Aimé Millet and E.-E. Viollet-leDuc. Statue of Vercingetorix, AliseSainte-Reine (Côte-d’Or). 1865. Photo
by the author
10.7 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Lycian tomb
(British Museum). Steel engraving by
Léon Gaucherel. Pl. 1 from Entretiens
sur l’architecture, vol. 1, 1863. Private
collection
11
Style
11.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Three water
vessels. Unsigned wood engraving.
From “Sixième entretien [1859],”
Entretiens sur l’architecture, vol. 1, 1863.
Private collection
11.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Interior
mouldings at the Parish Church of
Saint-Martin at Aillant-sur-Tholon
(Yonne). 1861–1865. Photo by the author
11.3 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Château of
Pierrefonds (Oise). 1858–1879. Photo by
the author
11.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Crystal
formation. Unsigned wood engraving.
Fig. 3 of “Style,” from Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 8, 1886.
Private collection
11.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Detail for
the lectern at Notre-Dame. 1868.
188.8 × 90.0 cm. Watercolor and ink.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
12
Locomotives and Iron
12.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. The city
of Carcassonne, looking west. 1853.
Watercolor and ink. 63.9 × 99.0 cm.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
12.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Château of
Pierrefonds (Oise). 1858–1879. Photo by
the author
12.3 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Guard House
at the château of Coucy. 1864. Postcard.
Private collection
12.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Tomb of the
Duc de Morny, located in Père Lachaise
Cemetery, Paris. 186–1866. Unsigned
wood engraving. Fig. 89 from Gazette
illustrations xvii
des architectes et du bâtiments, vol. 4, n. 9,
1866. Private collection
12.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Tomb of the
Duc de Morny, Paris. 1865–1866. Photo
by the author
12.6 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. First sketch
for a monument to be erected in Algiers
under the reign of the Emperor Napoleon
III [unbuilt]. 1864. Ink and watercolor.
80.0 × 163.0 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource,
NY
12.7 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Second sketch
for a monument to be erected in Algiers
under the reign of the Emperor Napoleon
III [unbuilt]. 1864. Ink and watercolor.
62.5 × 47.5 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource,
NY
12.8 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Imperial
train—Orléans railways. Partial
longitudinal section, carriage of honour.
Steel engraving by J.-C. Huguet.
Detail from pl. 86–87 of Encyclopédie
d’architecture, vol. 9, 1859. Courtesy
McGill University Library. Rare Books
and Special Collections
12.9 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Imperial
train—Orléans railways. Dining room
table. Steel engraving by J.-C. Huguet.
Detail from pl. 89 of Encyclopédie
d’architecture, vol. 9, 1859. Courtesy
McGill University Library. Rare Books
and Special Collections
12.10 Louis-Auguste Boileau.
Photograph of a model for a church
project. Salon of 1861. École des BeauxArts, Paris. Photo. École des Beaux-Arts.
© RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
12.11 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Gothic
inserted angle column. Wood engraving
by H. Lavoignat. Fig. 16 from “Septième
entretien [1859–1860],” Entretiens
sur l’architecture, vol. 1, 1863. Private
collection
12.12 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Late
twelfth-century corbel from the Church
of Montréal (Yonne). Wood engraving
by Guillaumot the Younger. Fig. 14 of
“Corbeau,” from Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture, vol. 4, 1859. Private
collection
12.13 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc.
10-meter brick wall, reinforced
with iron columns. Unsigned wood
engraving. Fig. 17 from “Septième
entretien [1859–1860],” Entretiens
sur l’architecture, vol. 1, 1863. Private
collection
12.14 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Corbelled
masonry with variation using an iron
column. Unsigned wood engravings.
Figs. 1 and 2 from “Douzième entretien
[1865],” Entretiens sur l’architecture, vol.
2, 1872. Private collection
12.15 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Market
project. Steel engraving by Claude
Sauvageot. Pl. XXI from “Douzième
entretien [1865],” Entretiens sur
l’architecture, vol. 2, 1872. Private
collection
12.16 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. 13.5-meterspan hall. Wood engraving by E.
Guillaumot. Fig. 3 from “Douzième
entretien [1865],” Entretiens sur
l’architecture, vol. 2, 1872. Private
collection
12.17 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. 20-meterspan hall. Steel engraving by Claude
Sauvageot. Pl. XXII from “Douzième
xviii architecture and the historical imagination
entretien [1865],” Entretiens sur
l’architecture, vol. 2, 1872. Private
collection
12.18 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. 46-meterspan polyhedral vaulted hall. Wood
engraving by E. Guillaumot. Fig. 18
from “Douzième entretien [1865],”
Entretiens sur l’architecture, vol. 2, 1872.
Private collection
12.19 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Abstract
volume, sections and plan of 46-meterspan polyhedral vaulted hall. Wood
engravings by E. Guillaumot. Figs.
16 and 17 from “Douzième entretien
[1865],” Entretiens sur l’architecture, vol.
2, 1872. Private collection
13
At War
13.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Road at
Villiers. Watercolor. 1870. 13.5 × 22.2
cm. École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. ©
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
13.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Villa in
Lausanne. Steel engraving. Pl. 161 from
Viollet-le-Duc and Félix Narjoux,
Habitations modernes, 1875–1877. Private
collection
14
Late Works
14.1 Félix Nadar. Portrait of Violletle-Duc. 1878. Photograph. © Adocphotos / Art Resource, NY
graphite and gouache. 28.5 × 45.5 cm.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
14.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Great Hall
of La Vedette, Lausanne. 1879. MAP. ©
Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand
Palais / Art Resource, NY
14.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Trees in the
Forest of Compiègne. 1871. Graphite.
16.6 × 14.6 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource,
NY
14.6 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Madame
Sureda (right) with unidentified
woman. 1877. Graphite. 13.4 × 16.2 cm.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
14.7 Front cover of E.-E. Viollet-leDuc, Histoire d’une maison, 1873. Private
collection
14.8 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. The
Massif of the Mont-Blanc. Map drawn
at 1:40,000. 1876. 117.5 × 99.5 cm.
Chromolithography by Georges
Erhard. Courtesy Département des
cartes et plans, Bibliothèque Nationale,
Paris
14.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Great Mullets
(String Brevent). 1869. Graphite. 26.1 ×
36.0 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture
/ Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
14.9 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Chain
needles at Chamonix. Reconstructions
of successive states. Undated. Graphite.
16 × 21.4. MAP. © Ministère de la
Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource,
NY
14.3 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Moonscape
with eclipse. Undated. Watercolor,
14.10 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Crystalline
system of the remnant peaks separating
illustrations
xix
the glacier towards Blaitière in the Vallée
Blanche. Undated. Ink. 20.0 × 26.6 cm.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
14.18 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. The Belfry.
1874. Watercolor and gouache. 25.0 ×
17.0 cm. MAP. © Philippe Berthé—
Centre des monuments nationaux
14.11 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Present
and early appearance of the Mont
Blanc mountain range. Unsigned
wood engravings. Figs. 3 and 4 from
Le Massif du Mont-Blanc, 1876. Private
collection
15
14.12 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Formation
of Mont Blanc. Unsigned wood
engraving. Fig. 1 from Le Massif du
Mont-Blanc, 1876. Private collection
14.13 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Topography
of Mont Blanc after formation.
Unsigned wood engraving. Fig. 12 from
Le Massif du Mont-Blanc, 1876. Private
collection
14.14 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Erosion
of rhombohedra. Unsigned wood
engraving. Fig. 47 from Le Massif du
Mont-Blanc, 1876. Private collection
14.15 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Plans of
protogynous withdrawal. Unsigned
wood engraving. Fig. 2 from Le Massif
du Mont-Blanc, 1876. Private collection
14.16 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. The
affinity between cellular and
hexagonal formations. Unsigned
wood engravings. Figs. 10 and 11 from
Histoire d’un dessinateur, 1879. Private
collection
14.17 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Tré-laTête. 1877. Watercolor, graphite and
gouache. 29.7 × 46.5 cm. MAP. ©
Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand
Palais / Art Resource, NY
Conclusion: Autogenic Rebirth
15.1 Title page from E.-E. Violletle-Duc, Histoire d’un dessinateur, 1879.
Private collection
15.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Chestnut
flower buds. Unsigned wood
engraving. Fig. 43 from Histoire d’un
dessinateur, 1879. Private collection
15.3 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Petit Jean’s
drawing of his cat. Unsigned wood
engraving. Fig. 1 from Histoire d’un
dessinateur, 1879. Private collection
15.4 Prosper Mérimée. Drawing of a
cat. 1849. Ink. From Maurice Tourneux,
Prosper Mérimée, ses portraits, ses
dessins, sa bibliothèque, 1879. Private
collection
15.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Study of cats
originally planned for a children’s book
to be published by Hetzel. Undated.
Ink. 10.4 × 18.2 cm. MAP. © Ministère
de la Culture / Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais /
Art Resource, NY
15.6 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Cat chimera
at upper gallery of Notre-Dame in Paris.
Postcard. Private collection
15.7 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Portrait of a
woman after Leonardo da Vinci. Wood
engraving by unidentified engraver.
Fig. 77 from Histoire d’un dessinateur,
1879. Private collection
15.8 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Tomb of
Prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov
xx
architecture and the historical imagination
in Odessa’s Orthodox Cathedral,
Odessa, 1859. Photograph. Private
collection
15.9 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Project for
a covered gallery in Russia. Wood
engraving by A. Prunaire. Fig. 72 from
L’Art russe, 1877. Private collection
15.10 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Project
for a 12-sided hall in Russia. Wood
engraving by Guillaumot the Younger.
Fig. 77 from L’Art russe, 1877. Private
collection
15.11 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Drawing
of a bat for Fig. 51 from Histoire d’un
dessinateur. Graphite. 14.5 × 16.0 cm.
MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource,
NY
15.12 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. The
working of muscles and tendons
applied to a mechanical device.
Unsigned wood engraving. Fig. 60
from Histoire d’un dessinateur, 1879.
Private collection
15.13 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Fifteenthcentury Gauntlet. Steel engraving by
A. Varin. Pl. 8 of Dictionnaire raisonné
du mobilier, vol. 5, 1874. Private
collection
Translation and Abbreviations
Note on Translation
The majority of Viollet-le-Duc’s published writings have never been
translated, with the notable exception of some excerpts from the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, the two-volume Entretiens sur l’architecture, the Massif
du Mont-Blanc and the group of five Histoires published by Jules Hetzel after
1871. Likewise, archival documents, letters, and other unpublished material
remain untranslated. Thus, most of the translations in this book are my own,
including all quotations from the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française
du XIe au XVIe siècle and the Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l’époque
carolingienne à la Renaissance. In the case of the Entretiens sur l’architecture, the
Massif du Mont-Blanc and the above-mentioned Histoires, I have consulted
existing translations, emending them wherever I felt it was necessary in order
to render more accurately Viollet-le-Duc’s original meaning.
List of Abbreviations
AA
Annales archéologiques
ANF
Archives nationales de France, Paris
BnF
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
DRA
E.E. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française
du XIe au XVIe siècle. 10 vols. Paris: Bance et Morel, 1854–1859
DRM
E.E. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier
français de l’époque carolingienne à la renaissance.
6 vols. Paris: Bance et Morel, 1858–1875
EdA
Encyclopédie d’architecture
EA
E.E. Viollet-le-Duc, Entretiens sur l’architecture. 2
vols. Paris: A. Morel et Cie., 1863–1872
xxii architecture and the historical imagination
JSAH
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
LA
Lectures on Architecture
LI
E.E. Viollet-le-Duc, Lettres d’Italie (1836–1837) adressées à sa
famille, ed. Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc. Paris: Léonce Laget, 1971
LIV
E.E. Viollet-le-Duc, Lettres inédites de Viollet-le-Duc recueillies et
annotées par son fils. Paris: Librairies-imprimeries Réunies, 1902
LVLD
Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc, Les Viollet-le-Duc. Histoire d’une
famille. Documents et correspondances. Genève: Slatkine, 2000
MAP
Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris
MP
Le Magasin pittoresque
NAF
Nouvelles acquisitions françaises, Bibliothèque
nationale de France, Paris
RA
Revue archéologique
RGATP
Revue générale de l’architecture et des travaux publics
Preface
If artists today work for the living, they must live with the dead.
Because only they can teach them.1
Viollet-le-Duc, 1859
The history of modern European architecture has traditionally been envisaged
as a progressive emancipation from historical models, first from the classical
canon in the eighteenth century, and then from historical revivalism in the
nineteenth. It is indeed inescapable that modern architecture be described
as a turn against tradition, but it would be a mistake to pit architecture’s
involvement with the past too squarely against its commitment to modernity.
For one thing, the rise of modernity is the development and exacerbation
of an historical consciousness; some form of historicism thus essentially
inheres to it. To be modern, moreover, is not so much a matter of committing
oneself to the new conditions from a realist point of view, as it is to engage
in an act of separation: “to move away from something, to cut oneself off,”
as Octavio Paz wrote in Children of the Mire.2 One of the principal modes of
criticizing the present is to invoke the past. Already during the Renaissance,
the retrospective turn became an essential component of early modern
architecture. But it was nineteenth-century historicism that would fully
and more self-consciously exploit the transgressive power of the backward
glance. With the various historical revivals of the period, Gothic revivalism
chief among them, architecture conceived of itself for the first time as an
intervention within contemporary reality, a corrective to a defective present.
Thus, paradoxically, revivalism came to generate one of modern architecture’s
most original practices.
Nowhere is this paradox better illustrated than in the work and thought
of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. Hailed as one of the key theoreticians
of modernism, he was also the most renowned restoration architect of his
age, a celebrated medieval archaeologist, and the most fervent apostle of
Gothic revivalism. Historians of modern architecture have naturally put
great emphasis upon Viollet-le-Duc’s structural rationalism and his openness
to, and engagement with, new materials such as iron. But, as this book
xxiv architecture and the historical imagination
demonstrates, Viollet-le-Duc’s turn toward structure had nothing to do with a
desire to be “modern,” in the shallow sense of celebrating a culture of science
and progress; on the contrary, it was above all a means of reviving the past, reenacting Gothic architecture by channeling the very gestures of the traditional
mason. When Viollet-le-Duc finally turned to iron construction relatively late
in his career, it was in defiance of contemporary engineers, and with the intent
to demonstrate how Gothic builders would have made better use of industrial
materials.
It is this sort of backward glance that reveals the unity in Viollet-le-Duc’s
immense web of activities, from his work as a restoration architect to his
interest in warfare and geology. His indefatigable and legendary busyness—
his “organized network of obsessions,” to borrow a term from Roland Barthes’
study of the historian Jules Michelet3—was born out of a single impulse, a
relentless attempt at a historical (and national) “repossession.” His desire for
history was deep, the product of a lifelong process of identification with the
past driven by an early childhood experience of traumatic loss. Viollet-leDuc’s structural rationalism had to be subsumed by such striving in order
to initiate a “reconstructive” process, to reconnect with the past through the
reparative gesture of the mason’s work. Hence, restoration, in all its layered
meanings, pervaded his outlook.
I borrow the expression “desire for history” from Stephen Bann’s remarkable
Romanticism and the Rise of History, which explored the many aspects, indeed
the sheer excess and extravagance of the Romantic “investment” in the past.4
For Bann, the flood of historical representations in both traditional and new
media during the first half of the nineteenth century stemmed from a desire
to restore depth to a flattened contemporary reality. The Revolution and the
chaotic Napoleonic regimes that followed transformed the general sense of
dispossession which came with the emergence of modernity into a sense of
temporal seizure. Such loss of the past, according to Bann, led to a “desire
for history” that spilled over all disciplinary barriers and invaded every type
of cultural activity. Bann describes the phenomenon as tied to a particular
“psychological disposition,” even if it involved a mass audience, whereby
the past was woven into the fabric of fantasies. Romantic remembrance may
have been a form of mourning, but by the same token, it brought the past to
life through an imaginative, restorative process that lead to unprecedented
investigations and fresh insights into the phenomenon of historicity.
In Du côté de chez Swann, Marcel Proust compared his own process of
remembrance to Viollet-le-Duc’s method of restoration: from a few traces
of the past, an entire edifice is re-constituted to a presumed original state,
“leaving not a stone of the modern edifice standing.”5 The comparison was not
without irony, Proust recognizing by it the subjective fantasy that drove his
writing of À la recherche du temps perdu. Of course Viollet-le-Duc would have
been less inclined to acknowledge such a subjective stance, prey as he was to
totalizing ideologies such as French nationalism. Yet, like Proust, he sought
to fuse into some redemptive unity the disparate fragments of a temporal and
preface xxv
cultural dislocation. Through a dynamic identification process, he summoned
up his own memories to re-embody his country’s past. The present work
seeks to unravel this process. It traces Viollet-le-Duc’s development, mapping
the attitudes he adopted toward the past in sequence, attitudes that formed
the stages of a self-reconstruction. Through his life journey, we follow the
route by which the technological subject was born out of nineteenth-century
historicism.
Notes
1
“Si les artistes doivent travailler pour les vivants, il faut qu’ils vivent avec
les morts. Car il n’est que ceux-là qui enseignent,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Première
Apparition de Villard de Honnecourt, architecte du XIIIe siècle,” Gazette des
Beaux-Arts (January 1859): 295.
2
Octavio Paz, Children of the Mire. Modern Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde
(Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 27.
3
Roland Barthes, Michelet (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1954), 7.
4
Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York: Twayne Publishers,
1995).
5
Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu, ed. and intro. Pierre Clarac and André
Ferré, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), Vol. 1, Du côté de
chez Swann, 199.
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Acknowledgments
The writing of this book was initiated in the most comfortable of circumstances,
during the eight months I spent as a visiting scholar at the Study Centre of
the Canadian Centre for Architecture in 2002. I thank this unique Montréal
institution, and particularly its founding director Phyllis Lambert, for having
provided such a conducive environment.
While at the CCA, I had the chance and pleasure to profit from the
benevolent presence of Stephen Bann of Bristol University, who was at that
time the Mellon Senior Fellow in residence. Bann shared many invaluable
insights into the nineteenth-century historical culture that forms the fabric
of this book. The time we spent perusing the volumes of Baron Taylor’s
magnificent Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’Ancienne France in the
CCA Library thus became in a way the “primal scene” of my research. Bann
remained a faithful reader to the end, despite the prolonged period of writing.
The result does not come close to the conceptual richness and elegance that
characterize his vast body of work, but his achievements served as a constant
model.
Another authority who informed the writing of this book is Robin
Middleton from Columbia University, insightful prober of all aspects of the
French rational architectural tradition and the person most knowledgeable
about Viollet-le-Duc, among other subjects. Throughout this project, he very
liberally made available his inexhaustible reservoir of knowledge. With his
usual dedication, he read a first complete draft over the Christmas holiday
2010, just a few days before leaving for an extended trip to Ethiopia. He sent
back the manuscript covered with handwritten notes that launched on my
side a productive series of revisions. I owe much to his uncompromising rigor
and exacting standards.
Aside from Middleton’s vast scholarship, my research drew extensively on
the publications of several scholars, notably the trio of American architectural
historians that have dominated the study of French nineteenth century:
Neil Levine, David Van Zanten, and Barry Bergdoll. It is a pleasure both to
acknowledge this debt and to express my admiration for their research and
insight. I fear I have at times forgotten to make explicit references to their
xxviii architecture and the historical imagination
work—every page of this volume should footnote their pioneering writings.
I want to thank, in particular, Neil Levine for the continuous inspiration his
work has provided me over the years. I extend my warmest gratitude also to
David Van Zanten, who was enormously free with his advice and precious
information. He very generously directed me to the Émile Millet documents
contained in the private archives of the Millet-Hawes family, even going to the
trouble of organizing a special visit for me to meet Julian Millet-Hawes and
his wife Julia in New Geneva, Wisconsin. I thank the Millet-Hawes for their
generous hospitability during that memorable summer outing. I must also
thank David Van Zanten and his wife Martha for their own kind hospitality
in Evanston, Illinois.
It is nearly impossible to express in a few words my indebtedness to Barry
Bergdoll. He has been one of my most constant interlocutors on the subject
of nineteenth-century architecture ever since we conducted preliminary
research together for a CCA exhibition in the 1990s. That ambitious exhibition
never saw the light of day, but the discussions it generated around the issue
of historicism led to many tangents that served to develop the context for this
book. Bergdoll’s work on Léon Vaudoyer has been a dependable reference,
especially concerning the complex and rich set of ideas surrounding
nineteenth-century architectural historicism. Bergdoll generously invited
me to present my work on several occasions at Columbia University, and I
profited innumerable times from his and William Ryall’s generous hospitality
in New York. For all these reasons and more, I am forever grateful to him.
I must also extend my sincerest gratitude to many French scholars on whose
work I have relied, and who have aided me with their encouragement and
advice, most notably Jean-Michel Leniaud and Bruno Foucart, the two leading
scholars of Viollet-le-Duc and his milieu. Foucart’s great catalogue to the
exhibition held at the Grand Palais in 1980 remains the best overall reference
for any study of Viollet-le-Duc. I am deeply indebted to Leniaud’s exacting
and impressive knowledge of France’s heritage institutions, which provided
the foundation for much of my thinking. Our discussions on the topic have
complemented the treasure trove of his numerous publications. I wish also to
thank French medievalist Arnaud Timbert, together with his students Arnaud
Ybert and Francesca Lupo, for their unique research on the material culture
of Viollet-le-Duc’s restorations, which has immeasurably extended the reach
of my thinking and research. I particularly thank Timbert for his continued
support and for organizing several international conferences on Viollet-leDuc which provided decisive forums for testing my research. I owe much
to the French medievalist Alain Villes, who has been unsparing of his time
in providing information on Reims Cathedral in relation to Viollet-le-Duc’s
so-called “ideal cathedral.” I also thank my fellow Viollet-le-Duc researcher,
Laurent Baridon; our friendly rivalry and his generous encouragements
having been a great stimulus. No less a debt of gratitude goes to François
Loyer and Marc Le Coeur. The former provided me with early insights into
Viollet-le-Duc through a series of public lectures on the topic at the Musée
acknowledgments xxix
d’Orsay; the latter has been extremely generous in making available forgotten
material buried deep in the archives of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.
Finally I must thank Antoine Picon, whose masterful work on the history of
the engineering profession, as well as his insightful research into nineteenthcentury technical and utopian culture, have been core resources all along.
Picon’s continuous support, optimism, hospitality, and friendship provided
guiding lights through the long journey of writing this book.
Over the decade of researching and writing, I have relied on a very long
list of people for advice, information, and support. Beforehand, I profited
enormously from insights from professors whose teaching left indelible
marks: the late Peter Collins, who first introduced me to Viollet-le-Duc,
Stanford Anderson, who directed my master’s thesis at MIT on Auguste
Perret, and Kurt Forster, who has been a permanent source of inspiration. On
the other side of the academic equation, I benefited and learned tremendously
over the years from my many students. I must first single out Ralph Ghoche,
whose research, insights, encouragement, and friendship has been a most
precious and continuous inspiration. I thank also my star students, Peter
Sealy, Diana Cheng, Christina Contandriopoulos, Nicholas Roquet, and
Edward Houle, for having provided research assistance and support in
myriad ways and on countless occasions. I am especially thankful to Cameron
Macdonell, whose remarkable doctoral work on Ralph Adam Cram and the
Gothic revival has been greatly inspiring. I also thank Andrew Ensslen for
his help in locating in Odessa (Ukraine) precious photographs of the tomb
of Prince Vorontsov. I benefited tremendously from discussions with Werner
Oechslin, Georges Teyssot, and Alessandra Ponte, and from their kind
speaking invitations. At McGill University, my colleagues Annmarie Adams,
Aaron Sprecher and Alberto Pérez-Gómez have always been stimulating
presences. I was enlightened by the exchange of ideas with other academic
colleagues in Canada, the United States and abroad. I thank them all for their
support, and will mention Didier Mehu, Lauren O’Connell, Todd Porterfield,
Harry Mallgrave, Elisabeth Emery, Aron Vinegar, Marc Grignon, Timothy
Brittain-Catlin, David Theodore, Laurent Stadler, Robert Jan Van Pelt, Denis
Bilodeau, Mario Carpo, Jean-Pierre Chupin, Jean-Paul Midant, Jean-Philippe
Garric, Katherine Fisher Taylor, Christopher Mead, Kevin Murphy, Edward
Eigen, Aliki Economides, and Spyros Papapetros. In Paris, I have enjoyed the
charming hospitality and friendship of Diane de Ravel, Isabelle Tarde and
Emmanuel Mourlet; thanks to them, Paris has become a second home.
As for archival resources, I would like to express a debt of gratitude to
the Viollet-le-Duc family, particularly the late Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc,
whom I must thank for repeatedly allowing me access to her study in her
Neuilly apartment; she was a gracious and patient host, always ready to
share fascinating anecdotes concerning her famous ancestor. Christine PoirotDelpech has also opened her home on rue de Liège, and made available for
study her collection of documents on the Maison Courmont. I must also
acknowledge the libraries and archives that have made this work possible,
xxx
architecture and the historical imagination
and their committed and resourceful personnel. I extend special thanks to
the many dedicated librarians and archivists of the Bibliothèque nationale
and the Archives nationales in Paris. I thank Jean Daniel Pariset, director of
the Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine in Paris, who has been
uniquely hospitable and generous in allowing me easy access to the Viollet-leDuc archives, even parts that were not yet available to the public. I must also
reiterate my gratitude to Jean-Charles Forgeret and Véronique Derbier at the
Médiathéque. I express my appreciation to many others, and their institutions,
in France and Canada: Bruno Ricart, director of the Archives départementales
de l’Oise; Nicole Garnier, Conservateur général at the Condé Museum in the
Château de Chantilly; Anne-Marie Joly, Conservateur at the late Musée de
Notre-Dame de Paris; Annie Jacques and Bruno Girveau at the École nationale
supérieure des Beaux-Arts; Caroline Mathieu and Alice Thomine at the Musée
d’Orsay; Jennifer Garland, Ann Marie Holland and Marilyn Berger at the
McGill University Libraries; and, not least, Howard Shubert, Pierre-Edouard
Latouche, Paul Chénier, and Pierre Boisvert at the CCA.
In terms of financial support, I thank David J. Azrieli and the Azrieli
Foundation for generous support in the last stage of the work, and the Graham
Foundation for a publication grant. I must also acknowledge the assistance of
the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Social and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, and the Institut de recherche en histoire de l’architecture,
which, among other things, allowed me to take leave from the School of
Architecture at McGill University in order to devote myself to research for
this book. And in this regard, I also thank former director David Covo for
making that leave possible.
In terms of language, I must express my warmest gratitude to Denise
Bratton. She carried out the most exacting and professional editing, weeding
out the many Gallicisms that crept throughout my writing and ensuring that
this long manuscript was in the right form. Her constant encouragement,
optimism, and friendship was invaluable. I also thank Sarah Ashton for
the last proofreading before the manuscript went to press. At Ashgate, I am
pleased to acknowledge the patience and dedicated work of Emily Yates and
Jacqui Cornish.
This book was somewhat of a family project. My aunt-in-law Luce
Jean Haffner of Oxford helped me with pointed research in the National
Archives in Paris, and provided a much needed palaeographic help with
difficult manuscripts. My father-in-law, Bernard Jean, read early drafts of
the first chapter dealing with Viollet-le-Duc’s childhood trauma and offered
helpful suggestions, drawing from his experience as a psychiatrist. My
older son Antoine helped in organizing and standardizing bibliographic
listings. My younger son Jules provided periodic comic relief. Finally, my
wife Claude Jean undertook a first editing of an early draft and provided
constant translation help and advice. Above all, she is the comforting and
nurturing presence that made the writing of this book possible. I dedicate
this book to her.
Part I
Restoration and Loss
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1
Mourning
At Notre-Dame
Sparing as a rule of intimate confidences, Viollet-le-Duc related in surprising
detail a childhood memory of Notre-Dame in the first of his Entretiens sur
l’architecture, an anecdote too elaborate and unusual to be entirely rhetorical:
I remember an extremely vivid emotion of my childhood that is still fresh in my
mind, though the incident in question must have occurred at an age which generally
leaves none but the vaguest recollections. I was often entrusted to the care of an
old servant, who took me wherever his fancy happened to lead him. One day we
entered the church of Notre-Dame; and he carried me in his arms, for the crowd was
great. The cathedral was hung with black. My gaze rested on the painted glass of the
southern rose-window, through which the rays of the sun were streaming, colored
with the most brilliant hues. I still see the place where our progress was interrupted
by the crowd. All at once the roll of the great organ was heard; but for me, the sound
was the singing of the rose window before me. In vain did my old guide attempt to
deter me; the impression became more and more vivid, until my imagination led me
to believe that such or such panes of glass emitted grave and solemn sounds, while
others produced shriller and more piercing tones, so that at last my terror became so
intense that he was obliged to take me out.1
In the “Premier Entretien,” Viollet-le-Duc used the anecdote to support
his argument about the unity of the arts. By relating his experience of the
transference of one sense into another, a case of colored-hearing synesthesia
relatively common in young children,2 he wished to demonstrate the original
wholeness and extension among all arts: “Art is unique, art is but one, though
it assumes diverse forms in order to act on the human mind,” Viollet-le-Duc
explained, “and when those diverse forms are brought into harmony in one
place and at the same time, … it is then that they produce the most vivid and
lasting impression which has been given to experience to the thinking being.”3
Underscoring art’s power to seize the imagination, Viollet-le-Duc suggested
that art could bend habitual perceptions of reality. It is an important statement
within his theoretical work, because it shifts the focus from the historical
and constructive to the psychological, and even physiological experience of
4
architecture and the historical imagination
perception. In the same “Entretien,” he related another anecdote, the story of
a young boy who refused to spend money to buy a dish for his dog, arguing
that the ones offered for sale were decorated with flowers and would thus
distract the animal, preventing him from eating.4 In all his naiveté, claimed
Viollet-le-Duc, the boy understood art’s essential power. The primal form of
the artistic impulse was the thrust to seize the imagination.5
One of the core theses of this book is that architecture, for Viollet-le-Duc,
was predicated upon loss, destruction followed by restoration being its most
primordial configuration. The Notre-Dame episode is indeed not simply the
case of a temporary diversion from the habitual, but of an extraordinary vision
that totally shattered any stable sense of the real. The hallucination experienced
by the young Viollet-le-Duc was not simply the enjoyment of an artistic illusion;
it was an involuntary, irrepressible, and frightening experience of architectural
animation. Far from a Romantic reverie, it brings to mind Rainer Maria Rilke’s
tactile confrontation with the “great rose window” that “gripped a heart and
pulled it deep into God”6—a fulguration that Rilke likened to being subjected,
face to face, to the unsettling wildness of the eyes of a large feline.
Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc was born in January 1814, as Napoléon
was achieving his last military victories, and a few months before the first
Restoration in April. He gives no date to his Notre-Dame experience, but we
can infer from his brief description that it occurred in his earliest childhood
during a funeral ceremony, the metropolitan church being crowded and
fully “draped with black.” The early years of the Restoration were marked
by a particularly high incidence of such mournful events, starting with the
ceremonies for the royal victims of the Revolution held at Notre-Dame in
May 1814 (Viollet-le-Duc was barely five months old) and the exhumation
of Louis XVI’s ashes and their translation to Saint-Denis on January 21, 1815,
anniversary of the king’s beheading. These two funeral memorials, together
with the entrées into Paris of Louis XVIII in May 1814, were the inaugural
events of the newly restored Bourbon regime. Similar celebrations were staged
throughout the Restoration, including yearly commemorations on the solemn
date of January 21. Particularly important were a series of funerary services
held at Saint-Denis and Notre-Dame in January 1817 for “the translation of
the mortal remains of the kings, queens, princes and princesses of the royal
household,”7 and, on May 26, 1818, the spectacular pompe funèbre for the
Prince of Condé held at Saint-Denis, with lesser ceremonies conducted at
Notre-Dame and other churches of the capital.8 If we take as a model the first
of these funerary services in May 1814, the key element of the decoration was
blackness. Following Françoise Waquet’s description, “the church [of NotreDame], draped in black up to the vault, was completely darkened, the entire
architecture disappearing under these funereal draperies. Upon this new
edifice of cloth, the insigniae of mourning were laid.”9
It is of course neither possible nor very important to identify the precise
ceremony that formed the cadre of Viollet-le-Duc’s Notre-Dame episode, but we
can safely assume that it was one of these numerous royal memorials. The royal
mourning
5
ceremonies of the Restoration were an early manifestation of a more general
cult of the past that would develop with ever-increasing intensity during the
Restoration and the July Monarchy. To solemnly renew with the ancien régime
was the overt purpose of these official acts of commemoration.10 The traditional
ceremonial was fully reinstated, governed by the old department of the Menus
Plaisirs. Effigies of the kings of France were often prominently presented,11 the
figure of Henri IV dominating as both founder of the Bourbon dynasty and
agent of the unification of a divided nation following the Wars of Religion.12
Forging new ties with the French monarchic tradition was, however, fraught
with the more recent memory of the royal family’s martyrdom.
During his Notre-Dame panic the young Viollet-le-Duc obviously had no
awareness of these attempts at historical recuperation, though, presumably,
his family would later have related to him the context of his memorable
misapprehension. Yet he unknowingly shared with the crowd surrounding
him that day the presence of a disruptive violence. One should remember
that for early nineteenth-century Frenchmen who had lived through the
Revolution, the Terror and the Napoleonic Wars, chaos was always lurking.
In 1816, Viollet-le-Duc’s hypersensitive mother Eugénie foresaw the
coming of “the end of the world”.13 Many hoped that the reinstatement of
the Bourbons to the throne of France would mark the end of that turbulent
period, bringing back tradition and religion. But as the Restoration evoked an
idealized monarchic past, the anger and fear left by the great Revolution was
not dissolved. Far from obliterating the memory of revolutionary “crimes,”
the Restoration positively cultivated them in state funerary commemorations.
Many, including the architect Pierre Fontaine who was close to the Viollet-leDuc family, would protest against the ostentatious and obsessive evocation
of the grisly events.14 François-René de Chateaubriand remarked that “en
voulant perpétuer la douleur, on en fait souvent perpétuer l’exemple [by wishing
to perpetuate the pain, we often end up perpetuating the example].”15 But
beyond its instrumental purpose, the remembrance of revolutionary crimes
could be conceived as exorcism. The yearly celebration of the beheading of
Louis XVI was a vivid occasion for collective expiation. The service of the mass
thus had a dark undertow, restoring the nation’s unity through the ritualistic
re-enactment of violence. These ceremonies can be seen as modern instances
of sacrificial appeasement as described by French critic and social philosopher
René Girard for pre-Christian societies: as a surrogate form of violence,
the rite is an operation of collective transfer that bears upon the internal
tensions, grudges, and rivalries at play within the community.16 It projects
onto the (royal) victim the seeds of dissension that is in danger of spreading,
uncontrolled, within society. In this sense, the church transformed with black
draperies during the Restoration not only represented the conventional décor
for mourning, but also signified latent internecine violence. It conveyed,
under controlled, ritualistic conditions, the breaking apart of the social world.
As in Viollet-le-Duc’s anecdote, the ritual liberated the forces of chaos, but
kept them securely within the confines of the church.
6
architecture and the historical imagination
The point could be extended from the political to the larger epistemological
issues embedded in Romanticism’s engagement with history. Haunting the
past to recover one’s bearing did not ensure the recovery of a stable, objectified
history ready to hand. As Stephen Bann recently remarked, the “desire for
history” in the nineteenth century is “the relentless appropriation, by text,
figure, and scenographic representation, of what is already irretrievably lost. It
is an effect of camouflage, or perhaps, in Freud’s sense, a work of mourning.”17
The nineteenth century’s rescue of a disseminated history became a process
of internalization and identification and thus prompted a journey into the
subjective and the imaginary. Viollet-le-Duc’s synesthesia at Notre-Dame was
precisely such an experience, albeit uncontrolled and extreme. Liberated from
any trace of quotidian life, the eye of the rose window, eerily glittering in the
middle of the blackened cathedral, drove the subject into its spiral orbit. The
historical monument was transformed into a frightening scene from which any
new world might emerge. Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire related
similarly vivid synesthetic correspondences between sound and color.18 In
both cases, the experience was drug-induced. Yet, as Baudelaire argued, “any
poetical brain, in its normal and healthy state, easily conceives these [sense]
analogies.”19 The imagination—specifically the nineteenth-century “historical”
imagination—was the “normal” faculty capable of transcending the distorting
screen of habit. Marshall McLuhan once remarked that “synesthesia” was
indeed the “sin of the nineteenth century,” stemming from a desire to create
environments in which “extra-sensory perception” is possible.20
First fears often strike deepest, shaping forever the landscape of one’s
imagination. Whether real or constructed to act as a screen memory, as
Freud describes all vivid early-childhood recollections, or even if completely
invented, which would make it no less revealing a document, the NotreDame episode is a primal event, key to understanding the origin of Viollet-leDuc’s life-long engagement with architecture. It reappears in various forms
throughout his life as he tried simultaneously to retrieve the intensity and
repress the fear of this first momentous architectural experience. At once
attracted and repelled by unsettling chaos, he paradoxically both sought and
repressed it: not only ratcheting into rationality the unbridled cathedral of his
This area has been left blank intentionally. To view Figure 1.1 as a
double-page spread, please refer to the printed version of this book
mourning
7
childhood, but also measuring the immeasurable Mont Blanc and ferreting
out the logic of the deadly battles of war. He even dismantled the very rose
window that led to his panic attack, reconstructing it in a way that led greater
visual stability to the gigantic scintillating oculus.
Viollet-le-Duc never forgot his encounter with Notre-Dame. At Chartres in
1835, rapt with admiration for the beauty of the cathedral, he wrote to his father
that “all my childhood dreams appear to be realized, the stones speaking to me
to the very depth of my soul.”21 In the early 1840s, on the first of his tours for
the Commission des monuments historiques, the French government agency
in charge of the survey and listing of historical monuments, his enchanted
intercourse with old French monuments grew into an even greater intimacy:
pillars, walls, and cornices “whispered to him” as he sought “their illnesses, their
sufferings.”22 During these introspective journeys through France he felt great
solace, forging a bond with the stone monuments and the vast historical field
they embodied. Viollet-le-Duc had progressively tamed the terror generated by
the monstrous building into a deep experience of empathic communication. No
longer imposing its “life” on the beholder, the cathedral was now the willing
object of Viollet-le-Duc’s own subjective projections.
Evocations of the Notre-Dame episode will recur throughout this book, as
they did during Viollet-le-Duc’s lifetime. If we consider his early work, one
project already provides a first echo of the experience and a model for all of
his subsequent work: the restoration study of the ancient theater at Taormina
in Sicily. Set high on a dramatic promontory hovering over the Mediterranean
Sea, the ruins of Taormina altogether overwhelmed Viollet-le-Duc on his visit
in 1836, offering a view “unmatched in France, Naples, or anywhere else.”23
He began drawing immediately on the site, but his restoration project was
completed only four years later, back in Paris, where it was exhibited at the
Salon of 1840. This was a sort of summation of Viollet-le-Duc’s grand tour of
Italy in 1836 and 1837, a studied alternative to the usual lavish restoration
projects of the pensionnaires of the Académie de France in Rome. Two splendid
perspectives, a panorama of the existing ruins (Fig. 1.1) and a complete
restoration of the ancient theatre (Fig. 1.2), were the key drawings, rendering
a sharp and spectacular visual record of the Sicilian site. Views before and
1.1 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
View of existing
conditions of the
Antique Theatre
at Taormina.
1836. Ink wash,
graphite and
gouache. 33.3 ×
170.5 cm. MAP.
© Ministère
de la Culture /
Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand
Palais / Art
Resource, NY
1.2
E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Restored view of the Antique Theatre at Taormina. 1840.
Watercolor. 76.6 × 133.5 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
This page has been left blank intentionally. To view Figure 1.2 as a
double-page spread, please refer to the printed version of this book
10
architecture and the historical imagination
after restoration were common in academic restoration studies by architects,
but Viollet-le-Duc’s two tableaux far exceed such renderings of alternative
states. They are ambitious pictorial essays akin to representations by painters,
notably, Achille-Etna Michallon’s energetic depictions of 1822, in which the
intention was to capture the full drama of the magnificent site. Viollet-leDuc’s watercolors are especially successful in this regard, anticipating the
majestic tableaux of Thomas Cole of 1843–1844. His drawings of “the before
and after” not only portray the scope of the site, but in their sharp contrast,
seize the dynamics of the making and unmaking of a world.
The rendering of the extant site is particularly powerful. A six-foot-long
horizontal panorama, it offers a glimpse of a cosmogonic event. A simple
drawing, it yet conjures a strangely alienating landscape. A rocky outcrop in
the middle of the sheet dominates the composition. Minutely detailed with
sharp shadows, this disruptive primordial stone contrasts with all the other
elements left in the depth of the pictorial field. Only a faint diagonal light
enlivens the monochrome background: separating light from darkness, it
delicately runs from the top left, its rays catching the rock in the middle and
finally coming to rest in the space of the theatre on the right, a void shimmering
in a dim light, still in the state of an idea in the process of emerging from the
creative mind.
And from the emptiness of that dilapidated landscape, Viollet-le-Duc’s
magic brush draws life: drenched in sunlight, under the saturated blue of
the sky, the restored view displays the radiating rings of the antique theatre
in the most colorful of Mediterranean visions. The blue and violet are at
maximum intensity, “reaching an excessive power of coloration” according to
Louis Sauvageot.24 No longer void, the huge conical vessel holds in its grasp
all the citizens of the ancient city of Taormina piously observing Aeschylus’
Eumenides, which unfolds on the stage.25 Keeping at bay the chaotic rock
formations that still emerge around and behind it, the theatre’s concentric
forms geometricize the splendid curve of the bay below and crystallize the
very radiance of the sun. As Edgar Quinet had said in 1830 about ancient
Greek theatres in general, the architecture extends and completes natural
energies, the theatre becoming the “intelligent organ” of unbridled mythical
forces.26 Viollet-le-Duc’s synesthetic representation of the Greek theatre is
a remarkable expression of the nineteenth century’s romantic aspiration to
totality.
But the juxtaposition of the actual and the restored view also shows how
much the conjuration of a total world epitomized during the Restoration in
resurrections of scenes from the past is always strewn with a threat of chaos.
From shapeless matter the spiral of a geometric and centred world emerges,
from the desert landscape, the synesthesia of the theatrical experience. The two
watercolors can also be considered in the reverse order, offering us the sight
of the unmaking of a world: from the unity of ancient society, we witness the
disintegrating effect of time, a few dilapidated rocky outcrops and a void left
in place of the once gleaming theatre. We are made to understand that order
mourning
11
is won from disorder and can always return to disorder. As in Viollet-le-Duc’s
Notre-Dame recollection, and in the historical experience of the Restoration as
a whole, the unity of experience is imposed upon unsettling chaos, loss being
either the precondition or the aftereffect of imaginative recuperation.
Double Bind
The Taormina restoration reveals the dialectic of loss and recuperation
that bears closely on the larger argument of this book. For Viollet-le-Duc,
buildings were not produced ex nihilo, but emerged out of a process of
restoration following a prior act of destruction, founding violence being
the mythic energy triggering human creativity. This chapter and the next,
which trace Viollet-le-Duc’s early years, attempt to show that the two faces of
“restoration” are not an isolated perception, but rather the culmination of a
decade of pictorial experimentation that alternated between the two poles of
vivid imaginary historical reconstructions and lurid desert landscapes.
Viollet-le-Duc’s “restorative attitude,” if it may be called that, thus well
precedes his first restoration works of the early 1840s for the Commission des
monuments historique. It reflects a multitude of determinants over the course
of his career, from his early training as a painter to the debates occurring in the
field of architecture and the general social tendencies that emerged following
the trauma of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. It also stems
from more intimate, deep-seated childhood experiences. His uncle Étienne
Delécluze, probably the individual closest to Viollet-le-Duc during his preadult life, wrote of the anguish of the young Eugène: “his soul, his heart, his
spirit, everything in him is disequilibrium.”27 The few remaining fragments
of Viollet-le-Duc’s diary of the 1830s, and the extensive correspondence with
his family of the same period, confirm that his Notre-Dame panic was not an
isolated incident but rather a sign of chronic anxieties. All through his teenage
years and young adult life, Viollet-le-Duc was subject to an ever-deepening
sense of estrangement. “I feel profoundly within myself,” wrote Viollet-leDuc at 19, “that nothing which surrounds me is strong enough to nourish my
existence.”28 A rage often seeped through the expression of his aspirations
to distinguish himself, a ferociousness that his youth alone does not entirely
explain. “My destiny is to carve my path in solid rock,”29 so as “to take revenge
for all the miseries that I have suffered.”30 A litany of complaints of this kind
seem to have plagued his late teens. A long diary entry dating from April 1833
recalls his past miseries at the boarding school at Fontenay-aux-Roses, hiding
from his classmates in a dark corner of the yard, “pondering hours on end
about my position in the middle of this little community that didn’t think like
me, that played, that laughed while I was crying.”31 In L’art russe, published
just before his death when he was prone to retrospective reflections, Violletle-Duc still felt compelled to speak of the “sad experience” of his childhood
education.32
12
architecture and the historical imagination
An analysis of Viollet-le-Duc’s particular family circumstances and
upbringing may shed light on the source of such feelings, and thereby
provide the psychological basis to understand and follow the path of his later
intellectual development. There is no question that Viollet-le-Duc’s childhood
was traumatically repressive, leading to a nearly pathological incapacity to
maintain a stable sense of self. Delécluze’s diagnosis of “disequilibrium,” and
the Notre-Dame episode are evidence of deep-seated conflicts that would be
resolved only through escape, in other words, through phantasmic means.
I believe the vital pointer to Viollet-le-Duc’s whole career is the unraveling
and deepening of such a primal fantasy, one that involved, from the start, a
regressive turn toward the past. What makes Viollet-le-Duc’s case particularly
interesting is that his inner conflicts channeled the larger social dilemmas
of the time, so that his idiosyncrasy could eventually take deep root in the
reality of nineteenth-century France. In that sense, he is an emblematic figure
of French Romanticism. After 1848, and especially during the Second Empire,
he emerged as a prime actor in the cultural politics of the period. He was
able to immerse himself so completely in his public persona, that he could
contemplate from afar, and in a sense dispel the ambivalences that plagued
his old self. It was in late 1857 that Viollet-le-Duc wrote about the Notre-Dame
episode, a few months after his father’s death. From that moment on, his
thinking took on a new cast, notably his view of a much expanded historical
panorama, integrating historicist theories of race. In retrospect, however, it
is possible to trace a surprisingly coherent development, from his romantic
flight into history in 1832 to the ethno-geographical expansion that led him to
move to the foot of the Mont Blanc in the 1870s.
In order to understand the dilemma that animated Viollet-le-Duc’s early
life, we need a clear picture of the dynamics within his family, of the domestic
tensions that, on many levels, were not untypical of a bourgeois Parisian
household engaged in the struggle for prestige that emerged so vigorously
during the Restoration.33 Viollet-le-Duc’s immediate family shared a house
with the extended family, a five-story Parisian immeuble still at rue Chabanais,
1, a few steps away from the Square Louvois and the Bibliothèque nationale
(Fig. 1.3). Viollet-le-Duc’s father Emmanuel-Louis-Nicolas had received as
a dowry part ownership, belonging to his bride Eugénie Delécluze, Étienne
Delécluze’s younger sister. But the building, erected by Étienne and Eugénie’s
father, the contractor and architect Jean-Baptiste Delécluze (previously “de
L’écluze”) who died in 1806 at the age of 73, remained nonetheless the spiritual
property of the Delécluze family. Étienne’s mother, who soon remarried
a high-ranking government official, kept an apartment on the first floor
until her death in 1825. His older sister Sophie, who married Jean-AntoineThéodoze Clérambourg, lived with her family on the third floor, while the
Viollet-le-Ducs lived on the second. Étienne kept for himself the fifth-floor
attic (nicknamed the donjon) and some space on the first floor. In his memoirs
published in 1862, Delécluze underscored the privilege of having lived so
close to his sisters, enjoying, he claimed, the pleasure of a fulfilled family life
mourning
13
1.3 The
Viollet-le-Duc
and Delécluze
family house at
1 rue Chabanais,
Paris. Photo by
the author
until the early 1830s, around which time serious family quarrels arose and his
famous literary salon was disbanded.34
In fact, life on rue Chabanais was never that tranquil. The dominant
personality in the house, apart from Delécluze himself, was his sister
Elisabeth Eugénie, Viollet-le-Duc’s mother (Fig. 1.4). Eugénie was an
attractive, exceptionally cultivated and charismatic woman who was the soul
of her husband’s famous Friday-evening literary salon. The reverse side of her
public aplomb, however, was hypersensitivity and frequent depression. Her
“darkened imagination always saw to exaggerate misfortunes,” as she herself
admitted.35 She was easily overwhelmed by life’s incidents, and her sensibility
was especially put to the test during the dramatic political events of her early
14
architecture and the historical imagination
1.4 Aimé
Millet (after
a watercolor
by Étienne
Delécluze),
Portrait of
Mrs. Sophie
and Eugénie
Delécluze.
Undated.
Charcoal and
gouache. From
Paul Gout, Violletle-Duc. Sa vie, son
oeuvre, sa doctrine,
1914. Courtesy
Bibliothèque
des livres rares
et collections
spéciales,
Université
de Montréal.
Eugénie, on the
right, is Violletle-Duc’s mother.
adult life. She brooded incessantly over the misfortunes of France, seeing in
them signs of divine wrath. She very frequently felt the need to retreat to take
the waters in Normandy, or to go to the countryside in Valenton, where her
mother had a house. Viollet-le-Duc, who greatly admired his mother and was
attached to her to the point of fixation, described her as being “molded by
pain, reveling in it, distilling it.”36
According to Viollet-le-Duc’s first biographer Paul Gout, an almost
pathological ambition took hold of Eugénie, sometime after her marriage
in January 1810, which “gave her no rest.”37 Her union with Emmanuel
Viollet-le-Duc had been concluded after a long and assiduous courtship.
Emmanuel, a close friend of her brother Étienne, was deeply in love, while
Eugénie, accustomed to being courted from an early age, gave in just to
mourning
15
settle an inescapable social convention, probably hoping that her husband’s
literary career would eventually take off. As Emmanuel’s career settled into
lackluster government service, she grew increasingly fretful. But Emmanuel’s
lack of success was only one element in a much broader and more complex
psychology of rivalry at work within the family. Indeed, the Viollet-leDuc and Delécluze household can be described as a prime example of the
frustrated ambitions of the Restoration, ambitions soon to be converted into
expectations for the young Eugène.
The reader should not be misled: Viollet-le-Duc’s family was far from
humdrum. It had achieved a good position, close to circles at court and
enjoying a wide network of friends in literary and artistic milieux. Both Violletle-Duc père and Delécluze held separate weekly salons on rue Chabanais,
prestigious cénacles where prominent literary figures of the Restoration met
including Jean-Jacques Ampère, Prosper Mérimée, Stendhal, Paul-Louis
Courier, Claude-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Charles Magnin, Ludovic Vitet,
and Charles de Rémusat. The company of these extraordinary men, many
of whom were regular contributors to the short-lived but famous liberal
(and Romantic) newspaper Le Globe, may have nourished the aspirations
of Viollet-le-Duc’s father and uncle, but they also reinforced ingrained
feelings of inadequacy. Many of their literary friends, most notably PaulLouis Courier, Stendhal, and Prosper Mérimée, made rivalry and “selffashioning” leading themes of their work. Mérimée should already be
singled out. Although there is no record of his being close to Viollet-le-Duc
fils during the latter’s youth, he was to become a crucial figure throughout
the architect’s career, first as mentor and advisor and later as his lifelong
friend (Fig. 1.5). Apart from his standing
among the century’s distinguished and most
intriguing literary figures, Mérimée was an
early pioneer of medieval archaeology and
a leading figure within France’s patrimonial
institutions founded by François Guizot at
the beginning of the July Monarchy. Born into
a family of artists, his father Leonor being
a noted painter, secrétaire-perpétuel of the
École des Beaux-Arts, Mérimée was a man
of exceptional sagacity and great originality,
famous for his concision, his incisive
terseness, his irony, and whose sensibility,
if often contained, was as sharp in artistic as
in literary domains. He would be a source
for many of Viollet-le-Duc’s architectural
insights. In the salon on rue Chabanais in
the late 1820s, however, he liked to remain
silent, standing close to his friend Stendhal,
with whom he shared a lucid and incisive
1.5 Achille
Devéria. Portrait
of Prosper
Mérimée. c. 1832.
Heliogravure
by E. Capron.
From Maurice
Tourneux,
Prosper Mérimée,
ses portraits,
ses dessins, sa
bibliothèque, 1879.
Private collection
16
architecture and the historical imagination
take on human nature. The two writers, like many other members of the
salon, stood at the realistic and rationalist pole of Romanticism, and were
generally scornful of Hugolian lyricism. But their desire to succeed and to
provoke was not lessened for that reason. The force of ambition must have
been quite palpable in the family house, and may indeed have left a strong
mark on the Viollet-le-Duc at quite an early age, especially since neither
Delécluze nor Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc were able to measure up to the
challenges offered by their remarkable friends. Delécluze failed in his career
as a painter, while Viollet-le-Duc père wrote novels and poems of no literary
distinction. Delécluze eventually drew from his acquaintance with famous
men, and particularly his famous teacher, Jacques-Louis David, a sort of
borrowed prestige, writing books of memoirs that attracted attention. Of a
more reserved temperament, Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc despised Delécluze’s
boastfulness, but he bore nonetheless a deeply felt resentment at his own
lackluster career.
Emmanuel’s failure to embark on a literary career seems particularly
unfortunate, as he was a man of real sensibility and talent, with a distinctly
original turn of mind (Fig. 1.6). But he had none of the daring and the taste
for provocation required to achieve distinction in the French literary world
of the time. He was overcome at an early stage with disillusionment, having
been, in his own words, “frustrated in all my propensities since my earliest
childhood.”38 Like many of his generation, his formal education was abruptly
brought to an end by the closing of the schools in 1793. After a decade of
frustrating work in the Napoleonic military bureaucracy, Viollet-le-Duc
père ended up as an administrator in the maison du roi (the royal household)
during the Restoration and the July Monarchy, holding a job in the modern
sense, but also becoming something of a courtier, dependent upon the good
graces of the monarch. Quiet, precise, and tactful, he did very well as a
court administrator, but his true ambitions lay elsewhere. Unable to fulfill
his literary aims, he turned bibliophile, amassing an outstanding collection
of works of medieval and Renaissance French writers and poets. His
unmatchable knowledge of that ancient literature was and remains his chief
claim to fame and originality. He had gleaned his old bouquins gothiques, as he
called them,39 from the debris of aristocratic collections that had ended up in
the stalls of booksellers after the Revolution. He spent all his free time around
the turn of the century roaming through antiquarian shops in the curious
fragment of old Paris stranded in the courtyard of the Louvre in front of the
Tuileries Palace, the same narrow maze of medieval streets where his friend
Alexandre Du Sommerard hunted the pieces of his extraordinary collection
of medieval artefacts later to form the Musée de Cluny.40 Emmanuel’s older
brother Sigismond lived in that segment of Paris, in the Hôtel d’Elboeuf,
providing a direct connection to the place that may have proven useful at a
time when one still tended to socialize where one lived.
There is something poignant in picturing Viollet-le-Duc père together with
Du Sommerard patiently unearthing an ancient French heritage from the midst
mourning
17
1.6 RaymondAuguste-Quinsac
Monvoisin.
Portrait of
Emmanuel
Louis-Nicolas
Viollet-le-Duc.
Undated. Oil on
canvas. From
Paul Gout, Violletle-Duc. Sa vie, son
oeuvre, sa doctrine,
1914. Courtesy
Bibliothèque
des livres rares
et collections
spéciales,
Université de
Montréal. Portrait
of Viollet-leDuc’s father.
of the Royal precinct. Sorting through the debris, they endeavored to restore
order and meaning in the wake of the chaos that had caused so much upheaval
within their own lifetimes. Their antiquarianism exemplifies social tendencies
long identified by historians as a mal du siècle. The sense of dispossession that
emerged during the post-revolutionary era led to an obsessive urge to rebuild
from the ruins of the past. That sentiment must have been felt with particular
acuity in the case of the Viollet-le-Ducs since their family had developed
special ties with the social world of the ancien régime. In 1741, Emmanuel’s
grandfather, Nicolas Viollet, had been curiously ennobled to the hybrid title
of “Viollet le Duc” (complete with coat of arms) thanks to the patronage of
the leading aristocratic family of the Duc de Montmorency Luxembourg.41 It
is unknown why a bourgeois de Paris had established privileged connections to
such a powerful house, but whatever the reason, it immediately elevated the
18
architecture and the historical imagination
family’s social rank and brought them relative wealth. During the Revolution,
however, their association with the Montmorency family had the opposite
effect, Eugène’s grandfather only narrowly escaping the guillotine.
The special circumstances of the Viollet-le-Duc family magnified the trauma
of the early nineteenth century. As the French attempted with difficulty to
resume a somewhat “normal” life with the restoration of the Bourbons in
1814–1815, they had to reckon with an entirely new social dynamic. The new
monarchy pretended to return to the old social order, but they could do so
only in appearance, as liberalism and a competitive capitalist economy became
irresistible forces. At the individual level, it translated into the fact that one’s
place in society was no longer given by pre-set traditional hierarchies; success
had to be conquered within an open field of fluctuating rivalry. The need to
distinguish oneself arose with particular intensity during the Restoration.42
With the end of the glorious days of the Napoleonic armies, what constituted
heroic action was no longer settled. The young hero of Stendhal’s Scarlet and
Black is the literary—and ironic—transposition of the epoch’s urge to carve
its place in history: Julien Sorel’s readiness to “expose himself to a thousand
deaths rather than fail to achieve success”43 reflects the anguish of a disoriented
youth who does not have a stable yardstick for judging the worth of his own
actions, except to mimic as a farce the impossible model of the “demonic”
Bonaparte. Within the Viollet-le-Duc family, the shift from old aristocratic
ideals to a new world of parvenus was specially felt. Many of the leading
members of the literary cénacles meeting on rue Chabanais—starting with
Stendhal—made that shift a fruitful theme of their work, but for the Violletle-Ducs, deprived of their former aristocratic patronage yet still dependent on
the court for employment, it must have called forth family ghosts. The image
of Emmanuel patiently rummaging through dusty antiquarian shops to fetch
his old bouquins salvaged from aristocratic houses takes on an especially
haunting aspect: his collecting was a way to “recollect” his own past.
Unusual for a boy, the first of Viollet-le-Duc’s two names is a homologue of
that of his mother, Eugénie. Born in 1814, four years into the marriage, Eugène
was a much-anticipated son and his mother could not help but transfer to him
the anxieties of her frustrated ambitions. Most crucial for young Eugène was
her decision to let her brother, Étienne Delécluze, take charge of his education
(Fig. 1.7). Delécluze claimed to have literally stolen the young baby from the
crib to teach him lessons of drawing and painting.44 An unspoken alliance
between Delécluze and his sister was formed to ensure that Eugène would
rise above the undistinguished status of his civil servant of a father. Delécluze
had his own reasons to focus attention on his nephew. A painter trained in
the atelier of the great David, he had eventually turned to art criticism and
literature during the Restoration. Partly due to financial hardship, but mainly
because he realized that he would never be able to achieve prominence as an
artist, he decided to give up painting at precisely the moment of Viollet-leDuc’s birth.45 Just like his sister, Delécluze projected his frustrated ambitions
onto the young Eugène, practicing a didactic experiment upon his nephew.
mourning
19
1.7 Lzinka de
Mirbel, Miniature
portrait of Étienne
Delécluze. 1832.
Watercolor. From
Paul Gout, Violletle-Duc. Sa vie, son
oeuvre, sa doctrine,
1914. Courtesy
Bibliothèque
des livres rares
et collections
spéciales,
Université de
Montréal
That mentorship was probably the single most important element that shaped
Viollet-le-Duc’s childhood. In his didactic novellas published after 1871,
Viollet-le-Duc introduced, under various guises, the figure of the mentor as
the central agent in the education of an individual and even of nations. Yet, in
his own life, Delécluze’s mentorship was the source of great psychical conflict.
Even more than his brother-in-law’s, Delécluze’s career epitomizes the new
conditions of life after the Revolution. In the first pages of his memoir on the
school of David, Delécluze relates with great emphasis the advice solemnly
given him by his father while the two were walking through Paris the day after
the fall of the Bastille: “The Revolution is destroying all distinctions among
men. … From now on, … work hard if you want to distinguish yourself: there
is no longer any other form of nobility.”46 Delécluze perfectly internalized the
lesson: not only would he work hard, but he would accept open rivalry as
20
1.8 Étienne
Delécluze,
Viollet-le-Duc
as a young boy
holding his paint
brush. 1819. Oil
on canvas. From
Pierre-Marie
Auzas, Eugène
Viollet-le-Duc
1814–1879, 1979.
Private collection
architecture and the historical imagination
the new mode of human inter-relationship, growing unusually susceptible to
opinion. His decision to stop painting was in part motivated by his failure to
attract the attention of critics at the annual Salon de Paris. He then turned to art
journalism, earning his living by reviewing the Salon for the leading and very
influential liberal newspaper the Journal des débats. His criticism, often stiff and
pompous in its form, demonstrated nonetheless a perceptive eye. He leaned
strongly toward the juste milieu: lucidly assessing the shortcomings of the “old
school” (of David) while fearing the license of the Romantics. He heralded
Ingres for maintaining the right line between David’s Greco-Roman rigidity
and Romanticism’s lawlessness—the key agent for a renewed French classical
tradition. Indeed, his writings on Ingres would not be a negligible factor
in the famous painter’s own development. But Delécluze’s most dominant
characteristic remained his in-between attitude, always highly aware of the
mediating gaze of others.
Delécluze stayed close to his two nephews Eugène and his younger
brother Adolphe throughout their childhood, going so far as to move to
Fontenay-aux-Roses on the outskirts of Paris when in 1826 the two children
entered the Institution Morin, a progressive school that adopted Pestalozzian
principles of education. Of the two, however, he preferred Eugène. As a
child, the latter was exceptionally candid and upright, absorbing with
seriousness and diligence his uncle’s advice.47 Delécluze recalls in 1836 that
Eugène displayed the most extraordinary behavior in his childhood years:
“so much beyond anything I have ever had the occasion to observe in my
life.”48 He had, notably, a precocious talent
for drawing (Fig. 1.8). We know relatively
little about the method used by Delécluze to
teach drawing to his nephew but the virtue
of hard work must have been paramount.
It was extremely effective, as Viollet-le-Duc
quickly distinguished himself by his uncanny
capacity to record faithfully. Drawing, in fact,
grew to be an uncontrollable urge. Delécluze
later recalled to Viollet-le-Duc:
Since your earliest days, your mother and I
incessantly tried to fight your tendency to let
the work of your hands usurp the work of
your intelligence. … You could not follow a
conversation or listen to a reading without
busying your hands with a pencil or a brush. Of all
of the disturbing predispositions that we observed
in you, this one preoccupied us more than any
others, and you can add up all the commentaries
and readings that I’ve made of Homer, Plato,
Dante, Vitruvius, and Horace, as a means to ward
off the manual labor of drawing to which you
were almost exclusively given over.49
mourning
21
This passage is significant, not only in showing how early Viollet-le-Duc’s
life-long compulsion to draw developed, but also in giving an idea of the
zealous attention that Delécluze—together with his sister—gave young
Eugène. It also stresses “the disturbing predispositions” of the child.
Even more relevant, it gives a glimpse of the insidiousness of Delécluze’s
mentorship. Having pressed Eugène to draw at the earliest possible age, he
then describes the “habit” as pernicious when he sees how much his nephew
took his recommendation to heart. Eugène’s drawing skills verged on the
autistic, obsessive and maniacally faithful in the smallest detail, and may thus
have genuinely appeared unhealthy to his uncle. But an ambivalent mixture
of encouragement and discouragement formed the habitual pattern of
Delécluze’s relationship to his nephew. Virtually all his letters to Eugène that
have come down to us (and there are a good many) display this ambivalence.
In his caustic Lundi devoted to Delécluze, the literary critic Sainte-Beuve
underscored the uncle’s ability “to scold while praising,” “at once proud and
worried about his pupils.”50
René Girard has described this dynamic as paradigmatic of the master–
disciple relationship, illustrating the rivalry inherent in what he calls “the
mimesis of apprenticeship”: “The master is delighted … to see that he is
being taken as a model. Yet if the imitation is too perfect, and the imitator
threatens to surpass the model, the master will completely change his attitude
and begin to display jealousy, mistrust and hostility.”51 At 23, Viollet-le-Duc
had grown conscious enough of his uncle’s behavior to describe lucidly their
relationship in these terms. Reflecting on his uncle’s newly won ascendancy
over his younger brother Adolphe, an aspiring painter, he wrote in a letter
from Rome to his father in 1837:
I know my uncle well, he will behave toward Adolphe as he did toward me. …
The day Adolphe brings back from his travels drawings that no longer feel like the
diligent work of a disciple, the master will find ways to disapprove, to get angry, to
torment the disciple in every way possible [my emphasis].52
Girard turned to the work of British anthropologist and information theorist
Gregory Bateson to analyze the insidious nature of the phenomenon of
mimesis in apprenticeship relationships. In his work on schizophrenia,
Bateson used communication theory to identify what he called the “double
bind” as the source of traumatic mental conflict. The double bind is a dilemma
in communication whereby two or more messages contradict one another
in such a way that, however one responds, one can never win.53 Bateson’s
classic example is a mother who tells her child that she loves him, but turns
her head in disgust as soon as the child moves toward her in response to
that love.54 Bateson insists that the destructive effect is brought about only if
the victim of the double bind is involved in an intense relationship with the
person who sends the ambivalent message. He also specifies that in order for
the double bind to operate, the victim must have no conscious awareness of
the contradiction. In the example just given, for instance, if the child could
22
architecture and the historical imagination
lucidly assess the mother’s behavior as a problem of miscommunication, it
would only be minimally affected. But a child is more likely to imagine that
the problem arises from its own inadequacy to fulfill the mother’s love. Girard
comments that a child continually confronted with these contradictions—
with this alternation of cold and warmth—is led to lose all confidence in the
capacity of language to communicate. Language, in that child’s mind, will
appear fraught with disorder, and always at risk to return to such disorder,
a schema that recalls the violence that lurked behind the rose window in the
Notre-Dame episode. Such rivalry of apprenticeship was a particular instance
of Girard’s broader concept of “mimetic desire,” which defined human desire
as always provoked (or mediated) by the desire of an other. It is worth noting
that Girard’s first insights into this structure of triangulated desire between
a subject, his model, and the desired object was in part developed from his
early study of the work of Stendhal, who was himself a frequent visitor in
the Viollet-le-Duc household.55 French literary and artistic circles of the
Restoration were indeed susceptible to and highly aware of such rivalry as
probably never before.
The double bind that confronted Viollet-le-Duc could have had minimum
consequences if Delécluze’s action had remained isolated: the emotional
incoherence of the uncle would naturally have been compensated by the love
of the parents. But the dynamics of Delécluze’s pernicious mentorship seems
to have spiralled to implicate the whole household on rue Chabanais. In a
letter to his new wife, who stayed behind on rue Chabanais while he was
traveling in Italy in 1836, Viollet-le-Duc warned her against the Delécluze clan,
specially his uncle and aunt Sophie. He did not mince his words: he described
them as people who “spent their whole life, deployed all their resources, to
torment” him, who combined in their heads “an amalgam of moral torture”
and the highest “refinements in hypocrisy.”56 A particularly harsh passage
gives a gloomy picture of life on rue Chabanais:
Overwhelm them with courtesy, with kindness, endure patiently their stings. …
They will hurt you no less in your deepest affections; not content with that, they
will disparage you in the eyes of your parents, your brothers, and your friends; if
they could they would make you an outcast, and through sheer envy, would end up
removing you from daylight, because anything they must share with you appears
poisoned to this race of civilized reptiles. They must enjoy things exclusively in order
to feel their worth. Selfishness is their god. Even their good graces are calculated, and
only serve to prolong the tortures they subject you to, and which in their petty narrow
minds they consider to be an expiation that’s owed to them for all the happiness with
which you surround yourself when you are far from them.57
Viollet-le-Duc wrote these words four years after the death of his mother. He
would have never included her in the clan of “civilized reptiles,” his mother
remaining for him, throughout his life, an idealized image of perfection. Yet
there are unmistakable signs that Eugénie herself was implicated in Delécluze’s
insidious pedagogy. Eugénie and her brother were exceptionally intimate.58
From the correspondence, we know that the two were acting in concert in the
mourning
23
education of young Eugène. Eugénie entirely trusted her brother’s judgement
on literary and artistic matters and she envisaged his mentorship of her son
as the best means to fulfill her high expectations. Delécluze himself described
how she was “so full of anxieties about [Eugène’s] future, so much desiring to
see her son distinguish himself.”59
From a number of remarks in the vast body of the family correspondence,
we get a distinct sense that the mother’s love became a bargaining chip in
Delécluze’s dealings with the son: young Eugène was to work always harder
and behave always better in order to dispel the gloom that regularly lay on
his mother’s brow. Not only did he have to cope with the trials inherent in
having a melancholic (or manic-depressive) parent, but he also had to bear
the extra guilt and responsibility Delécluze imposed on him as he tied the
mother’s well-being to the son’s performance. If we add to this the crucial fact
that Delécluze’s mentorship operated in the mode of a double bind, so that his
ambivalent demands could never be satisfied, we get a particularly complex
and perverse triangulation of desires between son, uncle, and mother. No
wonder Eugène began to draw compulsively: his drawings became the
bargaining chip. We can even embellish the picture by imagining Delécluze
bartering Eugène’s success in order to ensure his sister’s affection.
One document from his teenage diary gives us a glimpse of Viollet-leDuc’s mounting frustrations. He relates a scene with his mother at his uncle’s
house in Fontenay:
I remember a Sunday when I was at my uncle’s in Fontenay, my mother, whom
that day had taken me all against the grain, was criticizing me for being sluggish
and apathetic. I was letting her talk as I was then in the habit of not responding
to reproaches, but enclosing them in my heart and letting them form a nucleus of
sadness that would last me entire months. I had thus swallowed the sermon with
a heavy heart. In the evening I had gone back to the [Pension Morin] to fetch a
few classmates. I don’t remember why they were denied permission to leave. But
the motive invoked appeared to me supremely unjust. This refusal, the morning’s
sermon, the blame of weakness … the moral abandon in which I found myself, all
of this worked me up and made me incredibly bitter. I returned, discouraged, to
my uncle’s. … Coming in, I sought refuge in the room at the farthest remove in the
apartment; there, I fell in a chair crying bitterly. Mama entered and, taking my hand,
asked me what was wrong. Really angry, seeing from my mother’s face that the
criticism of lack of courage was about to come again, I got up, knocked over my chair,
and, grinding my teeth, started saying that life in the pension was unbearable, that I
would sooner be dead than be always so despised and tormented; that my classmates
bothered me, that my teachers were loathsome and stupid, and that all that had to
end, because I was at my very limit, that everyone was saying that I lacked energy but
that I would prove the contrary, because I no longer wanted to live in the dependence
of people that were not as worthy as I was. And on that sentence, I knocked over the
chairs, the tables, I hit myself on the head with my hands. I was screaming. … I was
pale, trembling with anger, and, taken over by all the emotions that erupted inside
me, I lost my mind completely and said a thousand silly things. That scene, which my
mother did not expect in the least, upset her deeply and I noticed it. So, I who would
have given my life to save one single strand of her hair, stopped suddenly being
angry in seeing the emotion drawn upon her feature; I started weeping again while I
covered her hands and dress with kisses.60
24
architecture and the historical imagination
Viollet-le-Duc’s fit of anger shows the extent to which he was prey to
unmanageable tensions: turning his anger and frustration at the whole world
to compensate for his unremitting but never satisfied desire for his mother’s
love. Causing havoc in his uncle’s house, he is, at the last minute, careful to
spare his mother’s feelings. His extreme susceptibility to her criticism works
in tandem with his inordinate vulnerability to her affective state, the one (his
good conduct) being tied to the other (her fragile happiness). “I see you have
put my advice into practice,” she writes to him after the incident, “continue
like this, my dear friend, and you will make me happy.”61 “Dispel all these
black moods … that cause me grief,” she writes to him a month later.62 Eugénie
seemed incapable of accepting her son unconditionally, as Eugène’s very
existence obviously tied into her own anxieties. Delécluze harbored similarly
ambivalent feelings toward his nephew. Both mother and uncle aroused in
the child his (and their) craving for love, but stopped short of true emotional
connection, with traumatic frequency.
From this rapidly drawn portrait of the family tensions on rue Chabanais,
we can return to Viollet-le-Duc’s Notre-Dame episode to attempt another
level of decoding. Taking the recollection as a screen memory, we can
transpose its elements into a family scene strung with the internal conflicts we
have just analyzed: all the main articulations of the short narrative find easy
correspondences. His being “entrusted to the care of an old servant,” who
took him “wherever his fancy happened to lead him” represents the “care” of
his uncle Delécluze and his “fanciful” mentorship. Entering Notre-Dame in
the arms of that old servant signifies his getting nearer to his mother (NotreDame), but only through Delécluze’s mediation. The cathedral “draped in
black” denotes the “dark spirit” of his depressive mother. His gaze resting
on “the painted glass of the southern rose-window through which the rays of
the sun were streaming, colored with the most brilliant hues,” is his obsessive
fixation upon his mother’s facial expression. The crowd blocking his way in
the church signifies his own inability to perform what is expected of him.
Finally, the synesthetic panic is the complete upheaval of his world when he
sees and hears his mother’s words of reproach, catastrophically losing in the
capacity of language to communicate. It could be construed as a seamless
transposition, yet one element still needs to be introduced to account for the
extreme violence of Viollet-le-Duc’s description of this childhood incident: the
actual loss of his mother in June 1832, which caused a developmental arrest.
It is only by considering the latter that we can understand how the cathedral
“draped in black” could then double as a substitute for the mother and point
to a restoration built upon loss.
Incorporation
According to Paul Gout, Eugénie’s anxieties were somewhat appeased
after 1831. Though she did not happily contemplate having to move into
mourning
25
the Tuileries, the sudden advancement in
her husband’s career, following the advent
of the July Monarchy, brought the longawaited satisfaction of her anxious ambitions.
Emmanuel got along exceptionally well with
the new bourgeois king, as Louis Philippe’s
inherent modesty, his juste milieu tendencies,
and his love of domesticity were all traits
in deep resonance with Emmanuel’s own.
Emmanuel thus drew close to the king, LouisPhilippe always keen to have him at his side
for any decisions relating to the complex
management of the maison du roi. Named
conservateur des résidences royales, Violletle-Duc père thus became an actor of some
significance in the cultural politics of the
July Monarchy. We unfortunately have no
documents that provide information as to how
Eugénie adapted to life at court. Whatever the case, it was short-lived: she
died less than seven months after the family moved into a vast apartment in
the Tuileries in November 1831.
As the first signs of Eugénie’s weakening health date from mid-April
1832, historians have often described her illness as cholera. Though struck
at the beginning of the famous epidemic, Eugénie’s symptoms points to a
much slower type of stomach disease, perhaps cancer. She died on June 2,
after six weeks of severe agony, her son Eugène at her bedside throughout
(Fig. 1.9). The event was a watershed in Viollet-le-Duc’s life, the loss of his
beloved mother marking, notably, the first rupture in his relationship with
Delécluze. Later, his uncle described his nephew’s conduct toward him at that
time as totally inexplicable if it wasn’t “the effect of a cerebral convulsion.”63 It
was also immediately after his mother’s death that Viollet-le-Duc undertook
his first trip alone, touring through Normandy in the autumn. This highly
significant journey constituted his first concentrated foray into the Middle
Ages, Normandy having been sanctified as the bosom of ancient France in the
magnificent early volumes of Baron Taylor’s Voyages pittoresques et romantiques
en ancienne France (1820–1825).
We have only fragments of Viollet-le-Duc’s diary from the period of his
mother’s illness, all concerning his insatiable need to work. One would have
expected him to lose all interest in professional occupations at this tragic time.
On the contrary, he felt ever more the urge to work for fear of being overcome
by the anguish “of a man who would be barred from using his hands,”64
as if his mother’s death would forever forestall his capacity to work. His
restlessness, and the reference to his hands points of course to his compulsive
need to draw, is here demonstrably proportionate to his mother’s distress,
the progression of her fatal illness leading to a feverish urge on his part to
1.9 RaymondAuguste-Quinsac
Monvoisin.
Portrait of Violletle-Duc. 1834.
Graphite. From
Pierre-Marie
Auzas, Eugène
Viollet-le-Duc
1814–1879, 1979.
Private collection
26
architecture and the historical imagination
make her happy through his work: “I feel it,” writes Viollet-le-Duc right at the
onset of his mother’s illness, “it is like a fire that burns within me, a fire even
harder to extinguish than that of ambition. My life will be a stairway without
a landing.”65 Viollet-le-Duc’s first visceral reaction to his mother’s illness, the
first signs of pathological mourning, show him getting stuck in a repetitive
childhood reenactment: the discipline of drawing and work imposed upon
him as a very young child by Delécluze transmuted in a psychic longing for
the lost parent.
The traumatic nature of Viollet-le-Duc’s loss is well documented. His closest
confidante, the musician Émile Millet, observed the odd behavior of his friend
even before the fatal outcome. Responding to a letter from a grieving Violletle-Duc, Millet writes back sometime in May, observing that
there is something in your letter that frightens me, it is the manner in which you take
[the pain], all concentrated, deeply buried, and not letting anything transpire. In the
name of God, in the name of your mother, take your mind off your sorrows. Your
current occupations do not have the power to make you do so; they only make your
pain more bitter and more poignant.66
Not only did Millet capture the extent to which Viollet-le-Duc was blocking
his pain, he also perceived how he perversely entwined his work with his
grief.
The behavior that most clearly alerts us to the pathological character
of Viollet-le-Duc’s mourning, however, is the rapid succession of erratic
decisions taken immediately following his mother’s death. On July 7, barely
a month after the tragic event, he falls passionately in love with a young
woman, Estelle, putting all his hopes for a future in that union.67 He asks for
her hand in early September, but being only 18 years old, he is turned down
by her family. Restless, he leaves for his month-long tour of Normandy a few
days later. Back in Paris in mid-November, he falls in love again, this time
with Elisabeth Tempier, whom he will marry two years later, in May 1834.
They remained together all their lives, but the romantic dimension of the
relationship was short-lived, a great emotional disappointment, as Viollet-leDuc himself was later to admit.
According to his first biographer, Paul Gout, Viollet-le-Duc’s frenetic
behavior was an instance of a particularly active mourning, compensating
his loss with passionate love. The suddenness and rapid succession of two
romances, one after the other, however, makes it unlikely that these affairs
stemmed from unhindered feelings. Mourning, by definition, implies that one
clings to one’s loss, refusing to renounce the lost person even if substitutes
are available. The very idea of substituting parental love with sexual passion
prompts questions. Viollet-le-Duc’s love affairs following his mother’s death,
normally a period of grief and prostration, border on the scandalous. It is
much easier to think of these infatuations as a surface phenomenon, the
symptom of a blockage. That Viollet-le-Duc underwent a sudden increase in
libido following his mother’s death seems, however, undeniable. Gout, who
mourning
27
had access to a now lost diary, speaks of the “extreme violence” of Violletle-Duc’s passion for Estelle and of his desire to possess her.68 If we turn to
the rather vast psychoanalytical literature on mourning, an increase in libido
following the loss of an object of love is not uncommonly observed. French
psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, working in tandem,
have put particular emphasis on the phenomenon, identifying it as a typical
symptom of pathological mourning. Torok’s 1968 essay “The illness of
mourning and the fantasy of the exquisite corpse” opens with excerpts from
correspondence between pioneering psychoanalysts Karl Abraham and
Sigmund Freud, where the former seeks the latter’s opinion on the puzzling
question of why a number of people show an “increase in libido some time
after ‘object-loss’.” Torok explains the phenomenon as “a desperate and final
attempt at introjection, a sudden amorous fulfilment with the [lost person].”69
The central thesis of this book is that Viollet-le-Duc’s life’s work must be
conceived as the progressive deepening of an identification with the past
predicated upon loss, a self-consuming restorative activity that can never be
stabilized in any firm object. A brief detour through psychoanalytical theory
fosters a clearer understanding of the event on which this regressive journey
hinges. The loss of his mother is clearly a key moment, enshrined notably in
his tour of Normandy, immediately after her death. In order to understand
the motivation, or more precisely, the structure of repressed desires that
generated the process, we need to know what happened at that moment of
loss. Much of the literature on mourning, including Freud’s seminal essay
“Mourning and Melancholia” of 1917, speaks of the mourner’s identification
with the lost person, whereby, to use Freud’s often-quoted expression, “the
shadow of the [lost] object fell upon the ego.”70 The mourner wants to hold
onto the lost object by incorporating it into himself. “In accordance with the
oral or cannibalistic phase of libidinal development,” writes Freud, “[the ego]
wants to do so by devouring it.”71 In his diary, Viollet-le-Duc jotted down the
following sentence on the day of his mother’s death: “Her last whisper just
touched my mouth lightly and it seemed to me that I made an internal effort
at retaining it.”72 The whisper inhaled by Viollet-le-Duc, his “internal effort”
at “retaining it,” are eloquent expressions of such an oral libido, incorporating
one’s loss through an act of swallowing, eating the “love-object” and retaining
it, intact, inside one’s own body.
Incorporation and the twin notion of introjection are leading concepts in the
psychoanalytic literature on mourning. They are useful in understanding
the nature of Viollet-le-Duc’s trauma in 1832 if we wish to go beyond the
simple truism that he suffered a tragic loss. Nowhere have the two concepts
been more thoroughly defined (and distinguished) than in the work of
Abraham and Torok. When Torok described the libidinal discharge during
mourning as “a desperate and final attempt at introjection,” she means
something very specific. The notion of “introjection” was first defined by the
Hungarian psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi in 1909 to describe the psychic
process by which healthy individuals assimilate the external environment
28
architecture and the historical imagination
to themselves, allowing a release of their subconscious desires into the ego
through the mediation of an external “love object,” to use psychoanalytic
terminology. Any fulfilling experience of love, whether familial or romantic,
implies a process of introjection. In fact, any life-growth experience,
according to Ferenczi, is an instance of successful “introjection”: the
projecting and synthesizing within the self of the external world. In the 1960s,
Abraham and Torok took up Ferenczi’s original definition. They specially
sought to distinguish the concept of introjection from the phenomenon of
incorporation, the latter being an “instantaneous” absorption of the lost
love object into the ego without synthesis—a pathology associated with the
“illness of mourning.”
To further clarify the phenomenon of introjection, we may return to the
question of the increase in libido during mourning. Torok diagnosed the
occurrence as a sign that the process of introjection was interrupted and
left incomplete at the moment of the death of a loved one: having been
unable to reach love fulfillment, and “faced with the imminent threat that
it might be too late, the ego regresses to the archaic level of hallucinatory
satisfaction” by taking the lost object inside the ego through the “fantasy of
incorporation.”73 Because the mourner’s unassimilated (or un-introjected)
drives are “congealed” upon the deceased in the form of an imago (an
imaginary and fixated representation of the love object), he/she is caught
with the obligation of having to find a way to keep the latter alive at all
costs. Torok underscores the contradictory nature of that “obligation”: the
mourner wants to keep the deceased alive despite the fact that he/she is
precisely what causes the greatest suffering. But Torok explains that the
fixation upon the lost object of love is cemented precisely because of “the
contradictory and therefore utopian hope that the imago, the warden of
repression, would authorize its removal”74: the source of frustration must be
kept alive, because the resolution of those frustrations can only come from
that source. “In order not to have to ‘swallow’ a loss,” explain Abraham and
Torok, “we fantasize swallowing (or having swallowed) that which has been
lost, as if it were some kind of thing.”75 In contrast to introjection, which
is a progressive process of assimilation of a loved person whereby it is
synthesized within the ego, incorporation is an “instantaneous and magical”
happening: compensating for the failure of introjection, the love object is
“inserted” within the ego without any process of assimilation and synthesis.
Abraham and Torok describe it as the building of a crypt inside the mind, a
sealed and hidden monument that contains the love object and maintains it
in a sort of second life. The increase in libido during pathological mourning
is the product of such hallucinatory fulfillment, as if the longed-for union
with the loved one had actually been consummated. The increase in libido
is palpably felt by the mourner, even if it is the product of a fantasy. In
fact, the libidinal discharge may be the only sign that the incorporation took
place, as Torok insists that the subject must always remain unaware of the
phenomenon:
mourning
29
The recuperative magic of incorporation cannot reveal its nature. Unless there is an
openly manic crisis, there are good reasons for it to remain concealed. Let us not forget
that incorporation is born of a prohibition it sidesteps but does not actually transgress.
The ultimate aim of incorporation is to recover, in secret and through magic, an object
that, for one reason or another, evaded its own function: mediating the introjection of
desires. Refusing both the object’s and reality’s verdict, incorporation is an eminently
illegal act; it must hide from view along with the desire for introjection it masks; it
must hide even from the ego. Secrecy is imperative for survival.76
In the clinical cases observed by Torok, she noted that the patient always
sought to hide the fact that he/she experienced an increase in libido. Unable
to understand the phenomenon as the product of incorporation, patients felt
great shame that the loss of a loved one would trigger an upsurge of sexual
desire. In Viollet-le-Duc’s case, the element of secrecy is apparently missing,
as his two successive “love affairs” during mourning were quite publicly
paraded: in both instances he officially asked for the young woman’s hand
in marriage. Why would Viollet-le-Duc seek public sanction for a union that
was inappropriate (given his age) and shameful (given the recent death of
his mother)? If we take Viollet-le-Duc’s behavior as an instance of a “manic
crisis,” which the suddenness and intensity of his love for Estelle does
strongly suggest, it may itself provide its own answer. Incorporation, claimed
Torok, is “an eminently illegal act,” and the increase in libido generated by the
phenomenon is the shameful embodiment of that illegality: feeling pleasure
at the moment of loss. Could it be then that Viollet-le-Duc understood, or
rather felt, that his libidinal energies were directed toward his mother? The
intense shame that would ensue would prompt him to find by all possible
means a “legal” substitute, even at the risk of having to bear the lesser shame
of “falling in love” during mourning. His sudden infatuation with Estelle, his
feeling that his whole future rested on the act of marriage, however ridiculous
it appeared to everyone around him, can be understood as a desperate
attempt at transforming an illegal love affair (with his mother) into a legal
one (with the young Estelle). It is important to underscore, however, that the
oral fantasy of having “eaten” his mother, produces neither assimilation nor
nourishment; on the contrary, “it only reinforces imaginary ties and hence
dependency.”77 The object swallowed, like an indigestible substance, remains
alien within the ego and serves only as a reminder that something was lost:
“like a commemorative monument, the incorporated object betokens the
place, the date, and the circumstances in which desires were banished from
introjection.”78 It is indeed the building of a crypt inside the ego, a crypt from
which the ghost of the departed comes to haunt the self. The architectural
metaphor should not be taken lightly: it points to the necessity of a private
sanctum whose thick walls secure the privacy of a secret intercourse, a
dimension of the fantasy of incorporation that will find actualization in
Viollet-le-Duc’s lifework.
One of the key signs of the special nature of Viollet-le-Duc’s loss is indeed
silence: there is absolutely no reference to the death of his mother in his
30
architecture and the historical imagination
extensive correspondence of the period, and even later.79 The phantasm of
incorporation demands the maintenance of a status quo, as if nothing had
ever happened. Its energies are spent instead toward a repressive effort
of conservation as regression: a compulsive and self-consuming process
of restoration whose goal can never be stabilized. Viollet-le-Duc’s flight
into Normandy two months after his mother’s death is thus perfectly
understandable. Traveling alone for the first time, he surrenders himself
completely to the Middle Ages, the latter becoming the terre élective for a lifelong regressive journey. The choice of Normandy was significant not only
for its being considered at the time the bosom of medieval France, but also
for having been his mother’s favorite place of “repair” during her frequent
bouts of depression. The region could thus serve a regressive phantasm both
at the level of a national history and at the very intimate level of his mother’s
restoration to health. The decision to travel to Normandy was, moreover, a
conscious move away from the influence of Delécluze, the solitary trip north
to see medieval monuments in 1832 being a direct counterpoint to his traveling
south the year before with his uncle to see Roman antiquities. The opposition
between Gothic and classic would haunt Viollet-le-Duc’s entire life. In a short
biographical account written late in life, he dates precisely to 1832 his reaction
to his (Neoclassical) training in Achille Leclère’s architectural office, and thus
his first turn toward the medieval.80 Indeed, from that date forward, Violletle-Duc spent nearly every summer traveling to major historical sites, mostly
in Normandy, drawing exquisite views and measured drawings of medieval
monuments. Such archaeological work is nothing less than a communion
with the dead, parasitically borrowing a vitality from the past, but also
paradoxically reliving the moment of loss as an endless work of restoration.
Doubling
Three crucial documents dating from the early 1840s confirm and substantiate
the claim that the relationship Viollet-le-Duc established with the past was
predicated upon loss. Even more important, they reflect the predicament of
a split self as described by Abraham and Torok. These documents consist of
intimate confessions made during the first years of his work as a restoration
architect, and thus shed a fascinating light on the profound motivation behind
the type of work that was quickly to bring him fame. The first takes the form
of a letter to his wife written from Albi in September 1842, describing in a
tone of light irony his painstaking recording of medieval monuments for the
Commission des monuments historiques:
Oh My God! Sometime I start wondering if [this work] is worth all the trouble, to
whom could it be useful? Many people do very well in life without having to bend
all day long over some sheet of paper. I know that this exaggerated love for things
which are neither of our time nor our customs won’t lead me that far; my mind is
repelled by such an empty attraction, but, on the other hand, an irrepressible leaning
mourning
31
or instinct does not allow my reasoning to take hold. It is another object of inner
struggle that leaves me without the peacefulness that I should be able to enjoy,
because it is said that one worry or another will always prevent me from enjoying
any of life’s circumstances that ought to make me happy. That is the way I am made;
I must accept it. But what’s the point of this mass of material piling up for years?
What’s the point of seeking everything that others have left behind and not producing
anything myself? What’s the point of this knowledge of things from the past since
there is nothing in the future? What’s the point of all this? I continually ask myself
And I would gladly put the question to the Commission des monuments historiques
if I could put such a question in the form of a preface to my report. It would make
for a good joke! But no. We are no more than earnest dealers in bric-à-brac, and quite
moody, who will not allow jokes to be made about old things. And am I not like that
myself? Am I not spending all my time in rapture before everything from the past,
as if we ourselves were not called upon to make things for those who will come after
us? I live in the past as much as I can, because the present appears to me insipid and
without resources. Is that really a way to live? What should I care? you’ll say. Why
not stay calmly at home planting cabbages, since you don’t believe anymore in the life
of our times. Alas, alas, what a shame! Happy the one who does not have two or three
men within himself, but only one.81
“Exaggerated love [for the past],” “repelled by an empty attraction,”
“irrepressible leaning,” “interior struggle”: these are expressions of shame.
Probably the most curious observation is the last: “Happy the one who does
not have two or three men within himself.” Here Viollet-le-Duc addressed the
era’s ironic disposition, expressing modernity’s sense of inner dichotomy. But
the comment is even more meaningful as a disclosure of his own inner schism.
It is all the more significant in our context since it bears upon Viollet-le-Duc’s
irresistible attraction to old bric-à-brac and medieval monuments. In his study
on fetishism, Freud described the splitting of the ego as the coexistence, within
the self, of two conflicting attitudes toward the external world inasmuch as
aspects of that world conflict with inner drives. One attitude takes reality into
account, while the other denies it, setting up in its place a fantasy produced
by desire. It is not simply the distinction between the conscious and the
unconscious, or the ego and the id, but a split within the ego itself.
Another document, the most significant of the three as well as the most
unusual, offers a remarkable confirmation of that reading. It takes the form of an
unpublished short story titled L’idiot de Véselai, found among Viollet-le-Duc’s
private papers, signed by his hand but undated. It is an autobiographical tale
of two siblings nursed by the same woman, an unusually rich theme which,
significantly, reappears in his last published book, L’histoire d’un dessinateur
(1879). The story takes place in “Véselai,” the invented spelling of Vézelay
marking the fictional transposition. We must assume that it was written after
1840, when he started work on his first restoration project in the abbey church
of La Madeleine in Vézelay. He may well have written it the very same year
that he wrote to his wife from Albi, since 1842 is the year during which the
story unfolds. This is also the period when Viollet-le-Duc befriended Prosper
Mérimée. In its limpid and detached style, the tale is not without affinity with
the latter’s short stories.
32
architecture and the historical imagination
The short tale is narrated by a Parisian architect supervising the restoration
of the church at Véselai, the most overtly autobiographical element.
Arriving from Paris, this man whose name is never disclosed encounters a
mentally handicapped adolescent, dressed as a woman, waddling through
Véselai’s southern square. As he stares at the boy with a fascination “mixed
with disgust,” a sturdy young mason intervenes just at the moment when
a passerby is about to offer a few pennies to the invalid, kindly taking the
cripple under his gentle arm while refusing the alms. L’idiot de Véselai is the
tale of that young mason of 15. Born of the illegitimate union of a soldier
and a woman working in fashion, the “unnamed boy” had been put in the
care of a wet nurse living in Véselai who receives monthly payment for her
services. Following the revolution of 1830, however, the child was abandoned
by his parents to his foster mother. The foster mother, having herself just lost
her husband, was without resources to take care of both her own mentally
handicapped son (the idiot) and his milk-sibling of the same age. Refusing
to send the abandoned boy to an orphanage, she courageously and lovingly
took care of both children. Jacques, as she calls her foster child, was a beautiful
and exceptionally intelligent young boy, “lively, cheerful, passionate.” After
his early schooling, he found work as an apprentice mason on the restoration
site of the church of Véselai, where he soon distinguished himself for “his
diligence, his skills, and the efficient and clear way he relayed instructions.”
The key element in the plot is the story of Jacques’s meeting with his real
mother, a short tale related by Jacques himself, who at that juncture in the
text takes over the role of narrator. Jacques had received a letter from his
real mother, now the head of a highly successful dress shop in Paris, asking
her son to come to visit her. Jacques is at first very resistant, but upon the
mayor’s insistence, he agrees to make the trip, traveling by foot all the way to
Paris. Upon arrival at his mother’s shop on a prestigious Parisian boulevard,
Jacques is confronted by sneering employees who refuse to introduce him to
his mother, who from her chic upstairs apartment, denies any knowledge of
the boy. With perfect composure, Jacques leaves the shop with the intention
of walking straight back to Véselai, but in the crowd on the sidewalk, an old
servant draws near him and takes him to his mother by a secret route. The
encounter between Jacques and his mother takes place in a highly ornate
boudoir. Expecting to see a much younger looking boy instead of the selfassured young man before her, she is first repelled, prompting Jacques to
want to leave immediately. But she persuades him that he could profit from
the protection of a general, a very rich man who would see to his proper
education. Guessing that the man in question is his biological father, Jacques
remains firm in his decision to maintain his independence. His mother insists
further, offering him money, and finally demonstrates signs of real affection
and tenderness. Jacques, incapable of holding back tears, responds that he
may consider accepting the protection of the general, but only once his foster
mother receives her due for her ten years of loving care. The tale ends with
these inconclusive words as Jacques takes his leave to walk back to Véselai.
mourning
33
The story is autobiographical in more ways than one. Not only is the
narrator a Parisian supervising the restoration at Véselai, but the main
protagonist, Jacques, has personality traits close to Viollet-le-Duc’s own. He
achieves his first professional recognition by distinguishing himself on the
Véselai building site. The narrator and Jacques thus double Viollet-le-Duc,
the narrator contemplating himself as the protagonist of a story about loss,
abandonment, and debt. But the theme of doubling runs at many levels:
there are two mothers (the real and the foster mother) as there are two sons
(Jacques and his foster brother). This is a particularly complex instance of
the nineteenth-century trope of the double in literature, whereby a character
splits in two so as to transfer his psychic burden to an alter ego, the classic
example being of course The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The literary
critic Robert Rogers described the theme as a strategy for coping: “doubling in
[nineteenth-century] literature usually symbolizes a dysfunctional attempt to
cope with mental conflict.”82
This is clearly the case in L’idiot de Véselai, where the splitting of the subject
follows the line between the good and the bad, or the sick and the healthy:
a vain mother who abandons her son is opposed to a caring, loyal, and
persevering mother figure who takes care of the abandoned child. Similarly,
a physically and mentally handicapped son is coupled with a healthy,
intelligent, and virtuous one. The story is also clearly configured in the form
of a double bind: the bad mother gives birth to the healthy son, while the
caring mother bears the handicapped one. Both “natural” family units are
therefore defective. Only through substitutes is equilibrium regained, as the
foster mother adopts Jacques, who then takes care of his handicapped foster
brother. But it is a fragile harmony as the “real” mother emerges into the
story, trying to regain control of the abandoned child. That scene is in itself a
classic double bind: the mother expresses the wish to renew contact with her
child (in a letter), yet all of her subsequent acts contradict the wish, first by
refusing to receive him when he arrives at her fashionable shop, and second
by her initial rejection when he actually appears in front of her. Jacques’s
intense fixation on his mother’s reaction at the beginning of their meeting is
particularly telling: her coldness causing him to display, for the first time in
the story, signs of weakness:
I kept my eyes upon this lady [his mother], I still could only detect in her a
sentiment of surprise, but without the least expression of affection, or even pity:
my legs gave way. I sat on a large couch covered with muslin and held my head
in my arms.83
When the mother finally displays real feelings toward her son, it is too late,
and he offers her only an ultimatum. There is no resolution, only repetition of
the act of abandonment.
Apart from providing further evidence of Viollet-le-Duc’s childhood
experience of the double bind, this story is particularly fascinating in
the way it juxtaposes the activity of church restoration with the theme of
34
architecture and the historical imagination
loss. The church at Vézelay dedicated to Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Mary
Magdelena the repentant sinner, can be tied to the mother theme. Art critic
Adrian Stokes once wrote that “architecture draws upon the origin of all
sense of wholeness,” as “architecturally, we experience the beloved as the
provident mother.”84 Stokes developed the idea around an “all-embracing
oral impulse,” seeking “nutriment” from building in the same way that
“we partake of an inexhaustible feeding mother.”85 The idea is explicit in
the story through the theme of wet-nursing. The nursing mother parallels
the restoration of the church: she sustained the abandoned child with her
milk while work on the church of La Madeleine gave Jacques the resources
to repay his debt. As Stokes has emphasized, following Melanie Klein’s
psychological studies of children: architecture exemplifies the “reparative”
function of art.86 It helps to unify the ego by the re-appearance of the whole
object. Seen in that light, the restoration of the church of Vézelay is directly
tied to the fantasy of incorporation discussed above: the restoration of the
church figuring as the condition for the return of the mourned mother.87
In L’idiot de Véselai, Viollet-le-Duc describes how the workers “returned
life and movement [rendaient l’existence et le mouvement] to this site once
threatening and deserted.” His repairing the church parallels his effort to
revive the lost object. The description of the church at Vézelai, once the site
of great historical events but now in ruins, having been “abandoned for 50
years,” immediately follows the account of Jacques’s abandonment. Both
child and church have been forsaken. The dilapidated state of the church,
the nave threatening to split open because “the exterior buttresses, which
should have supported the vaults, had collapsed,” echos the image of the
idiot, the cripple who can barely stand by himself and requires the constant
care of his foster brother. The latter, moreover, is capable of providing for
the former thanks to his successful work in restoring the ruined church. The
two, the church and Jacques’s split self, dovetail perfectly. It is thus fitting
that the story is entitled L’idiot de Véselai, since the idiot, though appearing
in the story only once briefly and dressed as a woman, is the true object
of the story: the crippled self, whose double, Jacques, desperately tries to
make good. The unity regained in the church—and we must here emphasize
how central the concept of the unity of style will be in Viollet-le-Duc’s
theory of restoration—parallels the protagonist’s painful and unsuccessful
struggle to cohere, to overcome his own doubling or splitting tendencies.
But the idiot, as so often in literature, also stands in for the figure of ideal
innocence. He cannot work nor speak, but he enjoys the unhindered love
of his real mother. His idiocy only serves to underscore the unconditional
nature of this love. In contrast, Jacques, however intelligent and dexterous
he may be, is an abandoned child. He is condemned to work to be able
to achieve that ideal, having to pay his debt to a foster mother. Nothing
could come closer to Viollet-le-Duc, whose life motto would become “nulla
dies sine linea” [no day without a line], driven all his life by a true terror of
idleness.88
mourning
35
One last document, another letter, this time to his father, written from
Beaune in April 1844, gives a marvelous and final confirmation of that reading.
This remarkable text, partially quoted above and to which we will return in
subsequent chapters, is written in one of Viollet-le-Duc’s rare moment of
fulfillment and happiness. It opens with the setting up of a quasi-ontological
barrier between his Parisian life and his travels through the provinces: “Would
you no longer count me among the living?” he asks his father, “do a few
departments between us form an insurmountable barrier?” He then goes on
to describe the charm and the immense pleasure he feels in his archaeological
work, this time without any expression of shame. In a quick retrospective
glance, he notes that his provincial journeys on behalf of the Commission des
monuments historiques allow him something “of the carefree life of his first
travels.” Of course, his dealings with the petty world of local notables and
priests occasionally cast a pall. But, upon reflection, he is forced to admit that
they only serve to increase the charm, because “after having given in to that
world,” after having lowered his mind “to the level of these petty ideas,” of
“having crawled” in front of municipal officials, the release into his private
world of the past is all the more satisfying:
Then, when I find myself alone, before my pillars, my walls, and my cornices, I
cast a loving eye upon those silent stones. I go round them with more care, more
precaution, I seek their diseases, their pains; in short, we understand one another
better, for very few people understand us, very few know what we tell one another;
I feel that they have in me a protector who will defend them, who loves them. They
know well then how to tell me what they have seen, their vicissitudes, their needs.
There is an indefinable charm in this affinity, a charm all the more vivid because it is
unknown, secret, intimate, silent.89
There is no greater expression of the intensity of secret (cryptic) feelings in
Viollet-le-Duc’s intercourse with the past than his own transference onto the
ailing cathedral. We would be hard pressed to find within nineteenth-century
architectural writing a more candid and spontaneous yet complete description
of the experience of empathy. All the elements that German theorists of the
second half of the nineteenth-century would identify in the experience are
present in Viollet-le-Duc’s brief confession: the patient inspection of the
architectural form in slow circling motion, the feeling of identification and
togetherness with the object, accompanied by a paradoxical sense of solitude,
the projection of bodily feeling upon the object, which takes on a life of its
own, finally the emergence of an overwhelming feeling of sympathy which
points to the possibility of a complete merging of subject and object. What
is extraordinary in Viollet-le-Duc’s description, however, is that, contrary to
later German theorists who sought to overcome historicism through a focus
upon the purely physiological dimension of aesthetic response, empathy
is now the very means used to penetrate history. The psychic experience
is clearly an “identifying empathy” whereby Viollet-le-Duc exchanges his
own identity (symbolized by his life in Paris or his dealings with locals)
36
architecture and the historical imagination
for a phantasmic identification with historical phantoms sealed within the
“living stones” of historical monuments scattered throughout the French
countryside. He would later write that, “cathedrals loom like great coffins
in the midst of our populous cities.” He meant that they were mutilated and
now forgotten monuments, but he also added that on certain days of public
celebration, “they regain their voice,”90 as if words could be heard from
beyond the grave. These phantoms have diseases and suffer pain that need
attention. Restoration is required. The original French text of his letter to his
father is specially revealing because, pierres being feminine, the whole passage
takes on the form of an encounter with a feminine presence: “Je tourne autour
d’elles … je sens qu’elles ont en moi un protecteur … qui les aime. Elles savent bien
alors me dire ce qu’elles ont vu, leurs vicissitudes, leurs besoins.” “Like mothers
of men, the buildings are good listeners,” once wrote Adrian Stokes.91 The life
encountered beyond the grave is the lost object that, within his fantasy, will
be regained, thanks to Viollet-le-Duc’s hard work and painstaking drawings,
as it has been since his earliest childhood. A slight delay before fulfillment is
thus maintained, even in the realm of the phantasm. It is within that gap that
Viollet-le-Duc’s whole life work unfolds.
Notes
1
“Il m’est resté le souvenir d’une émotion d’enfant très-vive et encore fraîche
aujourd’hui dans mon esprit, bien que le fait en question ait dû me frapper à un
âge dont on ne garde que des souvenirs très-vagues. On me confiait souvent à
un vieux domestique qui me menait promener où sa fantaisie le conduisait. Un
jour il me fit entrer dans l’église de Notre-Dame, et me portait dans ses bras, car
la foule était grande. La cathédrale était tendue de noir. Mes regards se fixèrent
sur les vitraux de la rose méridionale à travers laquelle passaient les rayons du
soleil, colorés des nuances les plus éclatantes. Je vois encore la place où nous
étions arrêtés par la foule. Tout à coup les grandes orgues se firent entendre;
pour moi, c’était la rose que j’avais devant les yeux, qui chantait. Mon vieux
guide voulut en vain me détromper; sous cette impression de plus en plus
vive, puisque j’en venais, dans mon imagination, à croire que tels panneaux de
vitraux produisaient des sons graves, tels autres aigus, je fus saisi d’un[e] si belle
terreur qu’il fallut me faire sortir.” Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, “Premier entretien,”
Entretiens sur l’architecture, 2 vols. (Paris: A. Morel et Cie., 1863–1872), hereafter
EA, vol. 1, 22; published in English as Lectures on Architecture, trans. Benjamin
Bucknall (New York: Dover, 1987), hereafter LA, vol. 1, 22. The anecdote was
also printed separately in the pages of the Magasin pittoresque 27 (1859): 103–104.
2
G. Stanley Hall found that 21 children out of 53 described the sounds of musical
instruments in terms of colors. See his “The Contents of Children Minds,”
Princeton Review (1883): 249–272. See also Heinz Werner, Comparative Psychology
of Mental Development (New York: Harper, 1940).
3
Viollet-le-Duc, EA, vol. 1, 21.
4
Viollet-le-Duc, EA, vol. 1, 28.
5
Viollet-le-Duc, EA, vol. 1, 24.
mourning
37
6
See the translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Rose Window,” in Ernest M.
Wolf, Stone into Poetry: The Cathedral Cycle in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Neue Gedichte
(Bonn: Bouvier, 1978), 118. I thank Robert Jan van Pelt for bringing Rilke’s poem
to my attention.
7
See the accounts published in Le Moniteur universel of January 20, 1817 and
January 22–23, 1817.
8
See Françoise Waquet, Les fêtes royales sous la restauration ou l’ancien régime
retrouvé (Genève: Droz, 1981), 81ff.
9
Waquet, Les fêtes royales, 79.
10
See Waquet, Les fêtes royales, and Ulrik Langen’s dissertation on the royal
ceremonies of the French monarchy during the Restoration, “I mindernes vold:
Restaurationstidens kongelige ceremonier 1814–30. Europaeiske kulturstudier,”
PhD diss., Roskilde University, 1998. The model ceremony for the recuperation
of the past during the Restoration was the coronation of Charles X at Reims on
May 29, 1826.
11
Waquet, Les fêtes royales, 130.
12
Waquet, Les fêtes royales, 136.
13
Eugénie Viollet-le-Duc to her husband Emmanuel-Louis Viollet-le-Duc,
Valenton, July 16, 1816, Les Viollet-leDuc, Histoire d’une famille. Documents et
correspondances, ed. Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc (Geneva: Slatkine, 2000), hereafter
LVLD, 33.
14
See the January 1817 entry in Pierre Fontaine, Journal 1799–1853 (Paris: École
nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 1987), vol. 1, 535–536.
15
René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe, 2 vols. (Paris: Flammarion,
Éditions du centenaire, 1964), vol. 2, 544–545; quoted in Waquet, Les fêtes royales, 131.
16
René Girard, La violence et le sacré (Paris: Grasset, 1972). While he discusses here
the inability to solve the sacrificial crisis in pre-Christian society, in his later Des
choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde (Paris: Grasset et Fasquelle, 1978), trans.
Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer as Things Hidden since the Foundation of the
World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), Girard shows the successful
resolution of the mimetic double bind at the basis of the sacrificial crisis with the
advent of Christianity.
17
Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York: Twayne Publishers,
1995), 10.
18
Théophile Gautier, “Le club des hachinins,” Revue des Deux Mondes 13 (1846):
520–535. Charles Baudelaire, “Les paradis artificiels,” Oeuvres complètes, 2 vols.
(Paris: Gallimard, La Pléiade, 1975) vol. 1, 375–517.
19
Charles Baudelaire, “Les Paradis artificiels,” 419.
20
Marshall McLuhan, “Electronics as ESP,” Explorations: Studies in Culture
and Communications 8, Section 3 (October 1957); quoted Stephen Bann, “The
Photographic Album as a Cultural Accumulator,” Art and the Early Photographic
Album—Studies in the History of Art 77, ed. Stephen Bann (Washington: National
Gallery of Art, 2011), 10.
21
“Il m’a semblé que tous mes rêves d’enfance se réalisaient et toutes ces pierres
me parlaient jusqu’au fond du coeur,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father EmmanuelLouis, June 9, 1835, LVLD, 329.
38
architecture and the historical imagination
22
Pierre-Marie Auzas, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1814–1879 (Paris: Caisse nationale des
monuments historiques, 1979), 43.
23
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Lettres d’Italie (1836–1837)
addressées à sa famille, ed. Geneviève Violletl-le-Duc (Paris: Léonce Laget, 1971),
hereafter LI, 87.
24
Claude Sauvageot, Viollet-le-Duc et son oeuvre dessiné (Paris: A. Morel et Cie.,
1880), 69.
25
The play is identified by Étienne Delécluze in his review of the work in Journal
des débats (April 10, 1840): unpaged.
26
Edgar Quinet, La Grèce moderne dans ses rapports avec l’antiquité (1830). I have
consulted the critical edition by Willy Aeschimann and Jean Tucoo-Chala (Paris:
Les Belles Lettres, 1984), 88 and 191–192.
27
Étienne Delécluze to Viollet-le-Duc, Fontenay-aux-Roses, August 26, 1836, LI,
125.
28
“Je sens profondément en moi que rien de ce qui m’entoure n’est assez fort
pour nourrir mon existence.” Our only source for his diary in these years is
the few quotes published in the monograph by Paul Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie,
son oeuvre, sa doctrine (Paris: É. Champion, 1914). I cite from the more recent
publication by Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc, LVLD, 112.
29
“Il est dans ma destinée de tailler mon chemin dans le roc,” Viollet-le-Duc, diary
entry, January 2, 1832, LVLD, 100.
30
“Je me vengereai bien des maux que je souffre,” Viollet-le-Duc, diary entry,
October 10, 1832, LVLD, 106.
31
“Je pensais des heures entières à ma position au milieu de ce petit monde qui
ne sentait pas comme moi, qui jouait, qui riait tandis que je pleurais,” Viollet-leDuc, diary entry, April 17, 1833, LVLD, 111.
32
Viollet-le-Duc, L’art russe, ses origines, ses éléments constitutifs, son apogée, son
avenir (Paris: A. Morel et Cie., 1877), 212.
33
Alan B. Spitzer, The French Generation of 1820 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1987), 224–258.
34
Étienne Delécluze, Souvenirs de soixantes années (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères,
1862), 59.
35
LVLD, 34.
36
“Façonnée pour la douleur, s’y plaisant, la distillant;” quoted in Gout, Viollet-leDuc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 6. Gout does not mention any source, but we
must assume that it is from Viollet-le-Duc’s lost teenage diary.
37
Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 6.
38
Emmanuel-Louis Viollet-le-Duc to Viollet-le-Duc (who was traveling in Italy),
Paris, March 1, 1837, LI, 262.
39
See Viollet-le-Duc père’s short poem dedicated to Claude-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
in 1837 in Auzas, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1814–1879, 18.
40
See the description by Félix Nadar in “1830 et environs,” Quand j’étais
photographe (New York: Ayen Publishing, 1979), 292.
41
See the detailed account of Viollet–le-Duc’s family lineage in LVLD.
mourning
39
42
See, among others, Leonore O’Boyle, “The Problem of an Excess of Educated
Men in Western Europe, 1800–1850,” Journal of Modern History 42 (December
1970): 471, and Spitzer, The French Generation of 1820, 224–258. See also the work
of René Girard, who made the exploration of the theme of rivalry in nineteenthcentury novel the linchpin of a larger anthropological theory of mimetic desire;
consult, among other sources, his Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, trans. Yvonne
Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), originally published
as Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (Paris: Grasset, 1961). Stephen Bann
has recently used Girard’s work to shed light on the career of the artist Paul
Delaroche in Paul Delaroche, History Painted (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1997), 36–37.
43
Quoted in Spitzer, The French Generation of 1820, 225.
44
Robert Baschet, E. J. Delécluze, témoin de son temps, 1781–1863 (Paris: Boivin et
Cie., 1942), 210.
45
Delécluze, Souvenirs de soixantes années, 73.
46
Étienne Delécluze, Louis David, son école et son temps (Paris: Macula, 1983), 5.
47
Delécluze writes about the young Eugène at age 11 in an entry dated March
12, 1825: “Cet enfant est charmant. Ses études vont assez bien et son caractère
droit, candide, son esprit clair et juste font concevoir pour son avenir les plus
heureuses espérances,” Journal de Delécluze 1824–1828 (Paris: Grasset, 1948), 151.
In another entry dated June 27, 1825, he refers to Viollet-le-Duc as “le bon petit
Eugène” Journal de Delécluze, 253.
48
Étienne Delécluze to Viollet-le-Duc, August 26, 1836, LI, 125.
49
“Depuis ta plus tendre enfance tu as montré une disposition que ta mère et
moi nous avons sans cesse cherché à combattre, c’est de faire céder le travail de
ton intelligence à celui de ta main. De toutes les dispositions inquiétantes que
nous observions en toi, celle-là nous préoccupait plus que les autres, et tu peux
compter les lectures et les explications que je t’ai faites d’Homère, de Platon, de
Dante, de Vitruve et d’Horace, comme des moyens propres à conjurer le travail
manuel du dessin auquel tu étais presqu’exclusivement livré,” Étienne Delécluze
to Viollet-le-Duc, August 26, 1836. LI, 126.
50
Claude-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux lundis (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1870),
120.
51
René Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann
and Michael Metteer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 290.
52
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Rome, March 14, 1837, LI, 266.
53
Gregory Bateson, “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia,” Steps to an Ecology of
Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972), 201.
54
Bateson, “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia,” 212.
55
See René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, passim.
56
Viollet-le-Duc to his wife Elisabeth, Palermo, April 28, 1836; LI, 53.
57
“Accablez-les de politesses, de prévenances, souffrez patiemment toutes
leurs piqûres, … ils ne vous en blesseront pas moins dans vos plus chères
affections; non contents de cela ils vous déprécieront aux yeux de vos
parents, de vos frères, de vos amis, s’ils pouvaient ils feraient de vous des
parias, et par envie même, finiraient par vous ôter la lumière du jour, car
40
architecture and the historical imagination
tout ce que vous partagez avec cette race de reptiles civilisés leur semble
empoisonné; il faut qu’ils en jouissent seuls pour en sentir la douceur,
l’égoïsme est leur dieu, leurs bienfaits sont calculés même, et servent à
prolonger les tortures qu’ils vous imposent, et que dans leur petit esprit
étroit ils regardent comme une expiation que vous leur devez de tout le
bonheur dont vous vous entourez loin d’eux,” Viollet-le-Duc to his wife
Elisabeth, Palermo, April 28, 1836, LI, 53.
58
See a few curious passages in Delécluze, Journal de Delécluze 1824–28, 146, 436
and 473.
59
“Ta mère si anxieuse sur ton avenir, si désireuse de voir son fils se distinguer,”
Étienne Delécluze to Viollet-le-Duc, August 19, 1858, Médiathèque de
l’architecture et du patrimoine, hereafter MAP, “Correspondance et rapports,
1855–56,” doc. 244.
60
“Je me souviens qu’un dimanche que j’étais sorti chez mon oncle à Fontenay,
ma mère, qui alors m’avait pris tout à rebours, me reprochait ma mollesse et
mon apathie. Je la laissais parler: car alors j’avais pris l’habitude de ne pas
répondre aux reproches, de les enfermer dans mon cœur et d’en former un
noyau de tristesse pour des mois entiers. J’avais donc digéré mon sermon le
cœur navré. Le soir je retourne à la pension pour aller chercher quelquesuns de mes camarades et les emmener chez mes parents. Je ne me souviens
plus pour quel motif on refusa de les laisser partir avec moi. Seulement le
motif me parut souverainement injuste. Ce refus, le sermon du matin, ce
reproche de mollesse … l’abandon moral dans lequel je me trouvais, tout
cela me monta, m’aigrit. Je rentrai chez mon oncle découragé. … En entrant,
j’allais droit dans la pièce la plus reculée de l’appartement de mon oncle;
là, je tombai dans un fauteuil en pleurant amèrement. Maman entra et, me
prenant par la main, me demanda ce que j’avais. Hors de moi, voyant sur la
figure de ma mère que les reproches de manque de courage allaient encore
revenir, je me levai, renversai mon fauteuil à terre, et, grinçant des dents,
je me mis à dire que la vie de pension m’était insupportable, que j’aimais
mieux être mort que d’être toujours ainsi méprisé et tourmenté, que mes
camarades m’ennuyaient, que mes professeurs étaient des infâmes et des
sots, et que tout cela devait finir, parce que j’étais poussé à bout, que l’on
me disait que l’énergie me manquait et que je prouverais le contraire, car je
prétendais ne plus vivre à la discrétion d’un tas de gens qui ne me valaient
pas. Et là-dessus je bousculais les chaises, les tables, je me frappais la tête de
mes mains. Je criais. … J’étais pâle, tremblant de colère, et, dominé par tous
les sentiments qui m’agitaient, je perdais la tête et disais mille folies. Cette
scène, à laquelle ma mère ne s’attendait nullement, l’émut fortement et je
m’en aperçus. Aussi, moi qui aurais donné ma vie pour conserver un seul de
ses cheveux, ma colère s’arrêta tout à coup en voyant l’émotion peinte sur ses
traits, et je me remis à sangloter en couvrant ses mains et sa robe de baiser,”
Viollet-le-Duc, diary entry, Wednesday, April 17, 1833; quoted in Gout,
Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 13–14.
61
Eugénie Viollet-le-Duc to Viollet-le-Duc, June 11, 1828, LVLD, 36.
62
Eugénie Viollet-le-Duc to Viollet-le-Duc, July 26, 1828, LVLD, 37.
63
Étienne Delécluze to Viollet-le-Duc, August 26, 1836, LI, 125.
64
“Comme un homme à qui l’on défendrait de se servir de ses mains;” quoted in
Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 23.
65
Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 101.
mourning
41
66
“Il y a quelque chose dans ta lettre qui m’effraie, c’est la manière dont tu prends
[la douleur], toute concentrée, toute profonde, et qui ne laisse rien voir. Au nom
de Dieu, au nom de ta mère, distrais-toi, tes occupations ne te distraient pas;
elles ne font que rendre ta douleur plus âcre et plus poignante,” Émile Millet to
Viollet-le-Duc, dated only as a Friday evening; we must assume it was written
sometime in May 1832, MAP, “Actes et papiers de la famille de Viollet-le-Duc,”
folio 132.
67
Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 23.
68
Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 23.
69
Maria Torok, “The Illness of Mourning and the Fantasy of the Exquisite Corpse,”
in Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, The Shell and the Kernel, ed. and trans.
Nicholas T. Rand (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994), 117.
70
Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” On Metapsychology, The Penguin
Freud Library, 15 vols. (London: Penguin Books, 1991), vol. 11, 258.
71
Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” 258.
72
“Son dernier soupir a effleuré ma bouche et il m’a semblé que je faisais un effort
intérieur pour le retenir,” Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 23.
73
Torok, “The Illness of Mourning,” 117.
74
Torok, “The Illness of Mourning,” 116.
75
Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, “Mourning and Melancholia: Introjection
versus Incorporation,” The Shell and the Kernel, ed. and trans. Nicholas T. Rand
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994), 126.
76
Torok, “The Illness of Mourning,” 114.
77
Torok, “The Illness of Mourning,” 114.
78
Torok, “The Illness of Mourning,” 114.
79
There is one documented instance of Viollet-le-Duc marking the date of his
mother’s death, but again only implicitly. On June 2, 1833, the first anniversary,
Viollet-le-Duc was in Bordeaux with his friend Émile Millet on a four-month
tour of the Pyrenees. Apart from a discrete mention in his diary, there is not a
word about the sad anniversary in his lengthy correspondence of that week.
But in a response to his father’s casual observation that he should slow down
to better profit from their journey to the Pyrenees, Viollet-le-Duc writes, on that
same day, an aggressive variation on his leitmotif of devouring ambitions and
restless work: “You tell me: you are madly running, what’s the rush? Ah! Well that’s
it, it is for me a resource, a pleasure, a way of life to devour regions, to reap
everything, without exception. I have a faith in the arts that will either make me
reach the goal I have set for myself, or make me work myself to death; for me
there is no middle position. In the arts, I believe the only good place is the first;
the second appears so much lower that I could never be satisfied with it; too
bad for me if I don’t reach that first place, because alone I chose my path, alone I
wanted to direct my way, alone I will bear the responsibility; and the way I feel,
is that when surrounded by [new] material [to draw and study], my conscience
and my responsibility push me not to miss any of it, not to take a single day off.
… All the sap that among the youth dissipates unto a myriad of small details,
is in my case concentrated upon one single thought, the desire to attain in the
arts the top rung of my own ladder, despite everything, despite the opinion of
others, despite all the false inroads that are spreading before me. … So therefore,
42
architecture and the historical imagination
I must work with my hands, with my head, until I have arrived or until I wear
out in death. … I must in five months make the progress that I could have made
in two years if I had been born in an artistic era, less dry and sterile than our
own.” The original French is as follows: “Tu me dis: vous allez comme des fous,
qu’est-ce qui vous presse? Ah! Voilà, c’est pour moi une ressource, un bonheur,
une existence, de dévorer ainsi des pays, de faucher partout sans exceptions.
J’ai une croyance dans les arts qui me fera arriver au but que je me propose
d’atteindre, ou crever à la peine, il n’y a pas pour moi de milieu. Je crois que
dans les arts, la seule belle place est la première, la seconde me paraît tellement
au dessous de la première que je ne m’en contenterai jamais; tant pis pour moi
si je n’arrive pas à cette première place, car seul j’ai choisi ma route, j’ai voulu
seul la diriger, je serai seul responsable; et comme je sens cela, ma conscience
et cette responsabilité me poussent, quand je suis entouré de matériaux, à ne
point en perdre, à ne point me donner un jour de repos. … Toute cette sève qui
dans la jeunesse se répand sur une foule de petits détails, se concentre chez moi
en une seule pensée, celle de parvenir dans les arts au dernier échelon, de mon
échelle à moi, malgré tout, malgré l’opinion des autres, malgré tous les sentiers
détournés qui s’offrent à moi. … Ainsi donc, il faut que je travaille des mains, de
la tête, jusqu’à ce que j’arrive ou que je crève. … Il faut qu’en cinq mois je fasse
les progrès que j’aurais pu faire en deux ans si j’étais né dans une époque artiste,
et moins sèche et stérile que la nôtre,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father EmmanuelLouis, June 2, 1833, LVLD, 131.
80
“Notes biographiques adressées par Viollet-le-Duc à Eugène Veron, directeur
de L’art,” dated 1877 or 1878, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1876–78, ”
doc. 2.
81
“Eh, mon dieu! Quelquefois je me prends à me demander si c’est bien la peine
de se donner tant de mal, à qui cela pourrait-il servir? Bien des gens font mieux
leur chemin, sans se courber ainsi des journées entières sur quelques feuilles
de papier. Je sais bien que cet amour exagéré pour des choses qui ne sont plus
ni de notre temps ni dans nos mœurs ne me mènera pas bien loin, mon esprit
se révolte contre cette admiration vide, mais d’un autre côté un penchant, un
instinct plus fort que moi ne laissent pas à mon raisonnement la liberté d’agir.
Cela est encore un sujet de combats intérieurs qui ne me laissent pas tout
ce calme que je crois posséder, car il est dit que quelque inquiétude viendra
toujours m’empêcher de jouir de toutes les circonstances qui me semblent
heureuses. On est fait comme cela, il faut en prendre son parti. Mais à quoi bon
cet amas de matériaux empilés depuis des années, à quoi bon cette recherche
de tout ce qu’ont laissé les autres pour ne rien produire soi-même, à quoi bon
cette connaissance des choses passées puisqu’il n’y a rien dans l’avenir, à quoi
bon tout cela, je me le demande sans cesse, et je le demanderais volontiers au
comité des monuments historiques si je pouvait faire une pareille question par
forme de préface de mon rapport. La plaisanterie serait bonne! Mais non. Nous
ne sommes que des marchands de bric à brac sérieux, et fort maussades, qui ne
permettons pas qu’on plaisante sur les vieilles choses. Et moi-même ne suis-je
pas comme cela! Ne suis-je pas à admirer tout ce que les temps nous ont légué
comme si nous n’étions pas appelés aussi à faire quelque chose pour ceux qui
viendront après nous, je vis dans le passé autant que je le puis, car le présent me
paraît insipide et sans ressource. Est-ce là une existence? Qu’est-ce que cela me
fait diras-tu? Pourquoi alors ne pas rester tranquille chez toi à vivoter, et planter
tes choux au besoin, puisque tu ne crois plus à la vie actuelle. Hélas, hélas, tout
cela est fort triste, heureux celui qui n’a pas en lui-même deux ou plusieurs hommes,
au lieu d’un [my emphasis].” Viollet-le-Duc to his wife Elisabeth, September 15,
1842, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1835–47,” doc. 80.
mourning
43
82
Robert Rogers, A Psychoanalytic Study of the Double in Literature (Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 1970), vii.
83
“J’avais toujours les yeux sur cette dame, je ne reconnaissais encore en elle
d’autre sentiment que celui de la surprise, mais sans un seul mouvement
d’affection, de pitié même: mes genoux fléchissaient. Je m’assis sur un grand
fauteuil recouvert de mousseline et je pris ma tête entre mes mains,” Viollet-leDuc, “Journal de jeunesse, Voyage 1833,” MAP, folio 366.
84
Adrian Stokes, “Smooth and Rough,” in The Critical Writings of Adrian Stokes
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), vol. 2, 244 and 243.
85
Stokes, “Smooth and Rough,” 243 and 240.
86
See the classic text by Melanie Klein, “Infantile anxiety-situations reflected in a
work of art and in the creative impulse” (1929), in Psychoanalysis and Art. Kleinian
Perspectives, ed. Sandra Gosso (London: Karnac Books, 2004), 33–41.
87
Stokes, “Smooth and Rough,” 243.
88
Robin Middleton, “Viollet-le-Duc and the Rational Gothic Tradition,” PhD diss.,
Cambridge University, 1958, 6–7.
89
“Lorsque je me trouve seul, alors, en face [de] mes piliers, mes murs et mes
corniches; alors, dis-je, je laisse tomber sur ces pierres muettes un regard
d’amour. Je tourne autour d’elles avec plus de précautions, plus de soins, je
cherche leurs maladies, leurs souffrances, nous nous comprenons mieux enfin,
car bien peu nous comprennent, bien peu savent ce que nous pouvons nous dire;
je sens qu’elles ont en moi un protecteur qui les défendra, qui les aime. Elles
savent bien alors me dire ce qu’elles ont vu, leurs vicissitudes, leurs besoins.
Il y a un charme indéfinissable dans cette sympathie, charme d’autant plus vif
qu’il est méconnu, qu’il est secret, intime, muet,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father
Emmanuel-Louis, April 28, 1844, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1835–47,”
doc. 162.
90
“Dépouillées aujourd’hui, mutilées par le temps et la main des hommes,
méconnues pendant plusieurs siècles par les successeurs de ceux qui les avaient
élevées, nos cathédrales apparaissent, au milieu de nos villes populeuses,
comme de grands cercueils; cependant … à certains jours de solennités
publiques, elles reprennent leur voix,” Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, 9 vols. (Paris: B. Bance, A. Morel et
Cie., 1854–1868), hereafter DRA, vol. 2, 391–392.
91
Stokes, “Smooth and Rough,” 245.
2.1
E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. View of Meaux. 18 June 1832. Graphite. 30.2 × 22.3 cm. MAP. © Ministère
de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
2
Architecture Painted
Drawing the Past
Within the larger perspective of this book, the most decisive argument
developed in the previous chapter is that Viollet-le-Duc’s travel to Normandy
immediately following the death of his mother initiated a process of
identification with the medieval past as a form of compensatory fantasy.
That one-month journey was Viollet-le-Duc’s first and only immersion in the
medieval world, and thus it was of crucial importance in setting the stage
for his lifework, in which Gothic architecture would serve to navigate loss in
constantly evolving ways. Historians have paid little attention to the 1830s
with respect to Viollet-le-Duc’s development, because it appears so removed
from his later restoration work and especially his rationalist doctrine. Yet it was
during those years that his efforts at restoring the past were first initiated in the
development of a pictorial approach for capturing the unity of architectural
experience through the historicist filter (Fig. 2.1). The Middle Ages had of
course long been appropriated by painters, engravers, and novelists as both
idealized model of existence and reservoir of fantasy. By the early 1830s, a
revolution in visual media brought about by new reproductive techniques
and modes of diffusion made such celebration of the past nothing less than a
mass phenomenon. Viollet-le-Duc played his part in producing that flood of
medieval imagery by painting medieval stage for theatre designer Pierre-LucCharles Cicéri, or illustrating Baron Isidore-Justin-Séverin Taylor’s Voyage
pittoresques et romantiques en Ancienne France (see Figs. 3.1 and 3.2). However
his investment in the medieval past may have been too personal to be
entirely reduced to the modalities of such a mass medium. He had a concrete
experience of the past in his travels through various regions of France—the
Midi, Normandy, the Pyrenees—before embarking upon his grand tour of
Italy and Sicily in 1836 and 1837. Throughout his career, travels in France
would form an essential and cherished part of his life, as he established an
ambulatory and intimate relationship with the national territory initiated in
the 1830s. Despite this first-hand experience, the visualization of the past as it
was expressed in contemporary media would greatly influence his perception,
46
architecture and the historical imagination
as we shall see. It is precisely the interweaving of his private fantasies with the
nation’s larger investment in the past which would ground his future success
as France’s preeminent restoration architect.
If the Middle Ages were not yet Viollet-le-Duc’s exclusive focus of
interest during the 1830s, they were unquestionably already rousing his
greatest passion. Starting in 1832, he made yearly pilgrimages to Normandy
and Chartres to draw medieval monuments until his departure for Italy
in March 1836. Normandy had been a favorite place of retreat for Violletle-Duc’s mother when she suffered from her frequent depressive spells,
undoubtedly an important association in his mind, but the region had also
acquired a heightened status during the Restoration. Relatively untouched
by vandalism, it possessed an exceptionally rich repository of medieval
monuments, attracting British and French topographers from the late 1810s.
As Stephen Bann recently observed, medieval Normandy was of interest not
only because of its distinctive monuments, but also because it was emblematic
of a historical period during which warfare had caused national boundaries to
fluctuate, making it a privileged site of national identity.1 The region’s complex
status is well conveyed in the introduction to the first volume of the Voyages
pittoresques et romantiques en ancienne France where Charles Nodier referred to
Rouen as that “cité toute gothique,” the “Herculaneum of the Middle Ages.”2
He meant to underscore the unique state of preservation of old Rouen, but the
choice of comparison is meaningful in other ways. Not only did it confer upon
the French city a prestige normally reserved for the ancient world, but it also
treated the Norman town, so close to Paris, as a site newly unearthed. Nodier
thus inscribed Normandy within the theme of death and rebirth so central to
the whole Restoration project.3 That Viollet-le-Duc would have been aware of
this mythic recuperation of the region in 1832 can be assumed from the fact
that his first contact when he arrived in Rouen on September 21, was with
Romantic architect Charles Robelin, a member of Hugo’s cénacle, one of the
latter’s advisors on the description of the medieval city in Notre-Dame de Paris.
From his travel diary, we learn that Viollet-le-Duc climbed up the Côte SainteCatherine to gain the “admirable prospect” of the city of Rouen from above,
just the sort of dramatic view that had served to illustrate the “Herculaneum
of the Middle Ages,” in Baron Taylor’s Voyages pittoresques (Fig. 2.2).
Unfortunately none of Viollet-le-Duc’s letters from his first solitary trip
have been preserved, perhaps a deliberate eradication. But from the wealth
of correspondence written during subsequent journeys, we can grasp the
intensity of his private interaction with medieval monuments and his longing
for historical absorption. In a letter to his father from Mont Saint-Michel, dated
on the third anniversary of his mother’s death, he wrote that “upon entering
[Mont Saint-Michel], one must abandon all notions of our civilization; one
must, as it were, identify oneself with the monuments, with this immense
sadness that seems to consume everything.”4 His drawings emphasize the
ominousness and gloom of the monument (Figs. 2.3 and 2.4), as it is the
sadness “consuming” the monument that permits the empathetic penetration,
architecture painted
47
further underscoring the oral form of assimilation discussed in the previous
chapter. Similarly, en route to the Pyrenees with his musician friend Émile
Millet in 1833, Viollet-le-Duc expresses his wish “to penetrate the proportions
[of the monuments], to enter within their ideas, to feel as they [once] have felt,
and not just to limit myself to possess them materially on pieces of [drawing]
paper.”5 But it is at Chartres that the rapture appeared to have been most
intense. In a letter to his father dated May 1835, he described the tireless work
of drawing the cathedral with his young pupil and friend Léon Gaucherel in
ways that confirm the sort of imaginative empathy invoked in Chapter 1:
We wake up at 5:30 a.m., and go directly to the cathedral only to return at 7:00 p.m. I
must confess that despite being always exhausted at the end of the day, I experience
a well-being and an indescribable joy in working with all my heart in front of such
a beautiful monument. One must be able to see it as we do, for days on end, to be
able to taste all the beauties reunited in this beautiful church. Whatever you say,
everything that speaks to the eyes, touches the heart; … this golden and sombre light
in the midst of these enormous piers changes like the colors of a rainbow, this vault
lost in a yellowish fog, these great slender statues, who, beneath the porticoes, appear
as the venerable reunion of our ancestors blessing their great-grand nephews—all
of this makes my heart vibrate, and plunges my mind into thoughts of inexpressible
sweetness. … A beautiful piece of architecture is always for me … how can I say? a
respectable thing, a thing that I wish to surround with care, that I never tire of gazing
at, and that I love as a friend who understands me, so I am happy all the time I spend
in front of our beautiful cathedral. At dusk, when … only the summit remains in a
golden glow from the last rays of the sun, I leave the monument with regret and wish
2.2 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. View
of Rouen. 1832.
Watercolor. 19.5
× 22.3 cm. MAP.
© Ministère
de la Culture /
Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand
Palais / Art
Resource, NY
2.3
E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. View of the north side of the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel. 1835.
Pen and graphite. 29 × 43 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Escarpment of Mont Saint-Michel. 1835.
Watercolor. 29 × 42 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
architecture painted
49
it were already tomorrow. I then enter within its sombre vault [j’entre dans sa voûte
sombre], and there, in a dark corner, in front of that rood loft covered with figures,
which traces the world’s most beautiful story, in front of those great rose windows
sparkling in the last rays of the day, tears come to my eyes, and I wish my life would
extinguish itself with the last rays of the stained glass, … I am quite a child, am I not?
But I am full of all these things, and I cannot refrain from talking about them.6
It is hard to imagine a better expression of the cathedral as womb substitute,
Viollet-le-Duc surrendering himself to the feminine embrace of its vaults,
becoming, as he writes, a child again, finding there the infinite delight of
darkness and silence. It is a funerary experience, a repetition in more controlled
fashion of his childhood Notre-Dame panic, with the sparkling rose window
animating the scene.
Despite such lyrical outpouring, Viollet-le-Duc’s travels in the 1830s
were far from idle reveries. They were intense periods of work, resulting in
a prodigious quantity of meticulous line drawings and watercolors. The act
of drawing was truly reparative, attending maniacally to every detail of the
monument, the latter being indeed a “friend” whom the architect–draftsman
surrounds with all his “care.” Viollet-le-Duc’s dedication to that work was
nothing short of obsessive. His 12-hour workday at Chartres was typical of
Viollet-le-Duc’s summer travel routine. The private diary of his friend Millet
during their extended journey together into the Pyrenees in 1833 testifies to
the intensity: Eugène drew every hour of the day while poor Émile was left to
himself rummaging about in libraries. No less than 173 finished drawings were
produced during that trip, which spanned 134 days, more than one every day,
despite the long hours spent on the road. Drawing was such a fixation that,
in 1836, Étienne Delécluze described Viollet-le-Duc as a “machine à dessiner,”7
the uncle somewhat bewildered and frightened by the overwhelming success
of his own mentoring. Drawing was unquestionably the chief means through
which the sensitive Eugène gained a foothold on life, providing a means to
focus and thus diminish the turmoil of his anxieties in quasi-autistic fashion.
No small part of Viollet-le-Duc’s attraction to medieval monuments stemmed
from the fact that they presented such a special challenge: the difficulty
of representing their complex vaults and ornaments only gave him the
opportunity to demonstrate his care and worthiness. It satisfied his reparative
impulse, reconstructing the object in its wholeness, and thus by association
recomposing, through painting, the absent maternal figure.
The dominance of pictorial activities in the 1830s also answered to more
pragmatic concerns. Having decided to forego training at the École des BeauxArts, the only public venue left for Viollet-le-Duc’s architectural talent was the
annual Salon de Paris. In the open field of rivalry that was the Salon, excellence
in drawing was certainly the best means of achieving distinction. In point of
fact, his first submissions in 1833 and 1834 (both lost) were exhibited in the
painting section. If his later submissions (in 1835, 1836, 1838, and 1840) were
hung in the few rooms devoted to architecture, they remained very painterly
in character. Absorbing pictorial compositions were the best means to attract
50
architecture and the historical imagination
the public’s attention at the Salon, so completely was it dominated by painting.
In his review of the Salon of 1840 in the first volume of the Revue générale de
l’architecture et des travaux publics, the young editor César Daly underscored the
tendency: architects, “young and old,” seek “at all cost to attract the attention
of the public” by developing “marvelous pictorial effects.” He had singled
out Viollet-le-Duc’s Taormina restoration as an example, noting the “unusual
talent” of the draftsman, but criticizing his overemphasis on the pictorial:
“Mr. Viollet-le-Duc … sought above all to create a beautiful watercolor, and
sacrificed unhesitatingly anything that he judged useless or detrimental to the
effect sought; in this regard, his concerns exceeds the bounds within which
we wish to remain.”8 Viollet-le-Duc may have been following a trend, but his
investment in a pictorial strategy for representing architecture was beyond
any common measure.
It is no doubt because of his talent as a draftsman that Viollet-le-Duc could
think of bypassing training at the École des Beaux-Arts. That courageous and
rebellious decision betrayed Romantic leanings, Viollet-le-Duc preferring
the mystique of a series of exploratory travels to the official prestige of the
École, which he called “un moule à architectes.”9 Disparaging the École and the
Académie des Beaux-Arts was a leitmotif of the young generation during the
1830s. Writing in L’Artiste in 1834, Alexandre Saint-Chéron was categorical:
“Any artist today who feels the call of an original talent, of the creation of
works that are the native expression of his ideas, of his own manner, considers
it beneath him to pass through the École Royale des Beaux-Arts.”10 The same
disparaging comments about the Académie des Beaux-Arts were made by the
Romantic Jeunes-France in Victor Hugo’s orbit. In the first issue of La Liberté,
Journal des Arts, the archaeologist Alphonse-Napoléon Didron calls for the true
artist “to overthrow these corporations that diminish if not kill art; intone and
shout with us: Down with the Institut and the schools!”11 Viollet-le-Duc’s friend
Charles Robelin even proposed in 1832 the creation of a free society of artists
without pupils (“société libre d’artistes sans élèves”) specifically to counteract the
influence of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.12
To criticize the Académie was one thing, but to actually forego training at
the École was quite another, especially for an ambitious young man such as
Viollet-le-Duc who, close to court and acquainted with the leading architects
of his time, entertained the highest hopes. The winners of the Grand Prix of
the École virtually held the monopoly on major public commissions, never
awarded through competitions, as in England. Viollet-le-Duc was aware of
the limiting factors that would have been pressed upon him, in any case, by
Delécluze and the group of Neoclassical architects in the circle of Charles
Percier who associated with the family entourage, and who first exposed
him to architecture: Louis Visconti, Jean-Jacques Huvé (who lived across the
street on rue Chabanais), and a recipient of the Grand Prix, Achille Leclère.
Charles Percier, and Pierre Fontaine themselves were regular visitors in the
Viollet-le-Duc household, and took great interest in the artistic development
of the young Eugène. The pressure to take the entrance examination for the
architecture painted
51
École must have been very strong, to say the least. But it only made Violletle-Duc more firmly resolved, occasional moments of anxiety and doubt
notwithstanding. Like many painters, his initial hopes lay with the Salon de
Paris, despite the fact that architecture had a negligible presence in the annual
venue.13 He earned his first medal in the painting section of the 1834 salon at
the age of 20.
Aside from being a means to distinguish himself within the field of artistic
rivalry during the 1830s, drawing was the skill through which Viollet-le-Duc
achieved his first measure of financial autonomy: he taught drawing, produced
theatrical sets for Pierre-Charles Cicéri,14 and created decorative borders for
Baron Taylor. Even his activities closer to architecture, such as the lucrative
production of decorative objects in collaboration with the bronze worker E.
Vittoz and the sculptor Antoine Desboeufs, were ornamental in nature and
relied largely on drawing. It was certainly not unusual for young architects
to earn their living by drafting. But Viollet-le-Duc was unusually good and
successful at it. In July 1834, only a few months after his marriage to Elisabeth
Tempier, he was granted his first official post: “répétiteur de dessin d’ornement
architectural” [tutor for drawing ornament] at the École de Dessin de Paris,
earning a modest 200 francs a year. It was an unusual appointment, as the
École normally recruited its répétiteurs from within its own student body. But
in its meeting of July 15, 1834, the Conseil d’administration underscored the
necessity to hire an instructor skilled enough to be able to replace the older
professeurs d’ornements who were often absent due to illness. The Minutes
specify that Viollet-le-Duc fils was a distinguished architecte–dessinateur whose
talents were known [to the council].”15 Viollet-le-Duc had powerful back-up:
Percier, who attended the meeting, and Jean-Hillaire Belloc, director of the
École de dessin and a friend of Delécluze. But it was his exceptional and
precocious talent as architecte–dessinateur that made the appointment possible
in the first place.
The most significant sign of his mounting reputation as draftsman, if not
as full-fledged painter, was King Louis-Philippe’s commission of a series
of watercolors of the Tuileries between 1834 and 1836.16 These paintings
are understandably Viollet-le-Duc’s most careful and finished works of
those years (Fig. 2.5). They represent the most diligent applications of the
basic principles of Delécluze’s drawing pedagogy: a scrupulous care for
exactitude and a keen sense of perspective with a slight idealization of form
that make for rather cold depictions. Drawing, for Delécluze, was the most
fundamental element of any artistic endeavor, a sort of universal language,
a science whose laws were thought immutable. Faithful to the conception of
Jacques-Louis David, especially as he saw it currently evolving in the work
of Ingres, he held accuracy and purity of the line the hallmark of any healthy
artistic tradition. The young Viollet-le-Duc had learned the lesson, his earliest
drawings having an analytical precision that will later lead Claude Sauvageot
to assume (wrongly) that Viollet-le-Duc was using the camera lucida. The three
Tuileries watercolors of 1834 are especially noteworthy for their strong optical
E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. View of the Stair of the Château des Tuileries.
Watercolor. 60.0 × 47.0 cm. Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.
Photo credit: Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY
2.5
architecture painted
53
effect; they telescope space in a way ideally suited to Percier and Fontaine’s
Neoclassical architecture conceived in terms of tableaux, and which Viollet-leDuc greatly admired at that time.17 As for the great watercolor of the Banquet
des dames, a vivid image of the colorful annual ball held in the sumptuous salle
des spectacles of the Tuileries in the summer of 1835, its most notable feature,
apart from providing a precedent for his future depiction of a collective social
event in the Taormina restoration, was that Viollet-le-Duc was promised for
it the huge sum of 6,000 francs.18 Such a colossal amount, usually reserved
for the works of established masters, shows not only the extent of the king’s
interest in the young Viollet-le-Duc, but also the latter’s ambivalent career,
the architecte–dessinateur’s first notoriety being gained more as a painter than
as an architect.
History in Color
Viollet-le-Duc’s privileging pictorial work had to do with the influence of his
uncle and the compulsive need to draw that accrued from that mentorship.
But it dovetailed perfectly with Romantic trends, which paradoxically were
discouraged by Delécluze. In a review in the Journal des débats of Viollet-leDuc’s early-Renaissance design for a fountain submitted to the 1835 salon, the
uncle detected the dangerous tendency in the work of his nephew.19 It was
not only the style chosen that signaled Romantic allegiances but the choice
of a painterly representation. A pictorial strategy was indeed the ideal means
to render the historical atmosphere so central to the romantic imagination.
Viollet-le-Duc’s first known restoration project, a reconstruction of the earlyRenaissance Chambres des comptes exhibited at the Salon of 1836, was a
pictorial essay in historical ambiance. And when he traveled to Italy in 1836–
1837, his most consistent interest was for polychromy in buildings, a most
crucial theme of architectural romanticism since the late 1820s. “What’s most
lacking in modern French architecture,” wrote Viollet-le-Duc from Rome to
his father, “is that brilliant and charming envelop of painting.”20 With such
“charming envelop,” Viollet-le-Duc, like many of his contemporaries, sought
to free architecture from Neoclassical rigidity through a more expressive fusion
of the arts.21 But color was also the medium for an ocular penetration into the
past, restituting history’s phenomenal presence. César Daly would associate
Viollet-le-Duc’s colorful restoration of the ancient theatre at Taormina—his
most ambitious project brought back from Italy—with pictorial exercises
indulging “in reveries that will never be realized,” singling out the trend for
Romantic historical recreations: “Having nothing to build, unable to live in
the present, [architects] find refuge in the past.”22
It is worthwhile to review the romantic trend for painterly historical
recreations in architecture. More than anything, Romanticism arose from an
enhanced historical consciousness and the concomitant hunger to “see” the
past, a phenomena that touched architects just as much as writers and painters.
54
architecture and the historical imagination
Historical representation has of course a long lineage in architecture, a field
organized around the imitation of historical types at least since the Renaissance.
But Romanticism investment in the past had nothing to do with the definition
of a universal architectural canon. It was the monument’s historicity rather
than its exemplarity that attracted the Romantics. It reflected a longing for
a unified world, where buildings, environment and society merged into a
synesthetic whole. In France, one of the initiators of a new Romantic mode
of historical representation was the influential architect and architectural
history professor at the École des Beaux-Arts Jean-Nicolas Huyot, student of
Antoine-Marie Peyre, but more significantly, first trained as a painter in the
atelier of David. Huyot devised a new form of drawing that sought to grasp
in one glance the architecture of the past within its total environment. His
views of ancient cities that interwove buildings with landscape are one of
the most obvious precedents to Viollet-le-Duc’s prospect of Taormina painted
at the end of the 1830s.23 As archaeologist Charles Lenormant observed,
Huyot’s renderings of antique cities demonstrated a painter’s as much
as an archaeologist’s conception.24 Huyot depicted the ancient sites with
exceptional accuracy, showing the ancient polis through an idealizing lens
that made it a unified community harmonized to its geographical and climatic
context. Precedents for that sort of architectural landscape may be found in
the background of the late works of Nicolas Poussin, a source from which
David himself had drawn for his Belisarius taking Alms of 1781.25 But the craze
for panorama undoubtedly played also a decisive role. The most famous of
French panorama painters, Pierre Prévost, was Huyot’s traveling companion
for part of the latter’s journey to the Orient in 1817. Viollet-le-Duc’s view of
the antique theatre at Taormina is different from Huyot’s vast and distant
prospects, notably by staging an actual theatrical performance, but it similarly
merges the geographical with the socio-historical context.
By 1840, however, the type of panoramic view painted by Huyot, now
deemed too distant and too objective, had lost much of its appeal. The term
“historical reveries” used by Daly in his review of the Salon better describes
the more absorbing tableaux produced by architects in the 1830s. It evokes,
for instance, the work of Daly’s own architecture professor, Félix Duban,
author of some of the most striking pictorial flights into the past (Fig. 2.6).
Starting in Rome when he was pensionnaire of the French Academy in the
mid- to late 1820s, Duban, leader of the soon to be dominant Romantic
architectural faction together with fellow pensionnaires Henri Labrouste,
Louis Duc, and Léon Vaudoyer, had devised his unique style of rendition
of historical interiors cluttered with odd paraphernalia. His compositions
sought to portray ancient daily rituals in ways obviously critical of the
distancing glance of his own history professor Jean-Nicolas Huyot. He was
moving closer in, focusing upon interiors with their details of furnishings and
accessories through which history could acquire renewed presence. Todd
Porterfield and Susan Siegfried aptly traced back to Jacques-Louis David and
his student Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres the emergence of such “power of
architecture painted
55
objects” to generate rich and absorbing historical associations.26 But this closeup strategy would be most widely diffused through the detailed restitutions
of period rooms in the small Troubadour style tableaux of the Lyon School or
the historical genre paintings of Paul Delaroche. Art critic Charles Blanc very
accurately described the effect generated by historical details and accessories
in a comment on Delaroche’s famous canvas The Murder of the Duc de Guise of
1834, drawing a parallel between the painter’s efforts to minutely recreate the
interior of the Château de Blois and Duban’s later restoration:
We enjoyed seeing, in The Murder of the Duc de Guize, the curtains and the moldings
of Henri III’s apartment, his prie-dieu, his wooden bed, its silk curtains, and also
the pourpoint of Balafré and the short coats of the mignons. Thus restored with such
learned faithfulness, with the same perfect taste that Duban could have brought
to it, this room of the Château de Blois where the murder took place, attracted and
absorbed all the viewers; … we believed we were there, indeed we were.27
Blanc’s text is eloquent in communicating the feeling of a historical resurrection
through the accumulation of details and accessories. The same strategy was
deployed by Duban for his archaeological fantasies, even if the historical
actors themselves vanished from view. Barry Bergdoll demonstrated that
2.6 Félix Duban.
Architectural
fantasy in the
style of Pompeii.
1856. Graphite
and watercolor.
38.0 × 48.0 cm.
Musée d’Orsay,
Paris. © RMNGrand Palais / Art
Resource, NY
56
architecture and the historical imagination
Duban’s precious watercolors were private works, serving as occasional
gifts to close friends or mementoes for associations.28 Yet these remarkable
images were not always kept confidential. In the early 1830s, at the moment
of the Romantic architectural movement when the four Prix de Rome winners
fomenting the rebellion had just returned from their five-year sojourn in
Rome, Duban exhibited several of them at the Salon and the Cercle des arts.
He also later exhibited a group of works in the French architecture section of
the great Paris exhibition of 1855. If the fantasies remain exceptional within
Duban’s oeuvre, they do shed light on an important aspect of architectural
Romanticism, showing how its investment in historical studies was part
of a new mode of architectural visualization, linked to current debates on
architectural polychromy, but also to developments in painting. The dreamy
quality of these painted fantasies may appear distant from Viollet-le-Duc’s
work of the 1830s, yet it bring us right to the core of the paradox of the
restorative imagination of the nineteenth century, a paradox that Viollet-leDuc had already confronted in the 1830s: how to simulate ocular penetration
into the past, when the past is by definition already gone.
Duban’s “decorative” sensibility was obviously related to the issue of
architectural polychromy, a hotly debated topic in Parisian circles during
the late 1820s and early 1830s which historians David Van Zanten and Robin
Middleton, among others, have analyzed with great finesse.29 Jacob-Ignaz
Hittorff, a pupil of Charles Percier, had initiated the study of antique and
medieval polychromy following archaeological investigations carried out in
Sicily in 1823 and 1824. His polemics on color did not stem from archaeological
concerns alone, but reflected a desire to legitimize increased freedom of
expression in architecture: not only was coloration a means to spread the
charm of “local color” upon the architectural object,30 but it also generated
“powerful effects by the union of all three [visual] arts, … striking the senses
and the mind with what is at once the most attractive and impressive that can
be produced by the genius, talent and science of man.”31
While making his discoveries in Sicily, Hittorff had written an open letter—
once referred to as the first “manifesto” on architectural polychromy—
to the painter François Gérard.32 The letter offers a textual rendering of
Duban’s painted fantasies, with Hittorff imagining himself in the middle
of an ancient religious ritual in the Temple of Concord at Agrigento: “The
sacrifice is already finished, the great priest, followed by his ministers,
returns in slow steps and soon the bronze doors close up again, separating
the people from the officiates. Only I could penetrate [into the temple’s cella]
after them.”33 The description that follows is highly detailed, depicting the
temple’s sculptures and furnishings, emphasizing the effect of the sun’s rays
illuminating the many polychrome details, the wind fluttering in the hanging
draperies, etc. Except for the notable exception of a stunning drawing inside
a temple cella, Hittorff never indulged much in imaginary reconstructions,
as did Duban, but the letter to Gérard wonderfully evokes the impulse to
imagine “penetrating” the secret of the ancients. “Erudition is no longer
architecture painted
57
a dry book,” summarized Beulé about Hittorff, “antiquity is reborn, it
takes shape, it quivers: it is the miracle of resurrection.”34 Restoring color
to ancient monuments was to recapture the true phenomenal dimension
of historical experience, returning mystery and drama to the bleached-out
remains of antiquity. David Van Zanten traced the origin of this method
of imaginative “resurrection” through color to Quatremère de Quincy’s
great Jupiter olympien (1814–1815) whose opening text brims with an intense
sense of discovery, compelling the reader to penetrate a world previously
unknown.35 Attempts at such imaginative reconstruction of the past were
not unusual at the turn of the century. A few years before Hittorff visited
Sicily, Huyot himself had experienced a similar frisson of resurrection while
visiting an ancient monument at Dendera in Egypt. As he made the effort
mentally to restore its original colors, the monument suddenly animated
itself in his mind, being “no longer of stone” but transforming into “a meteor
that resembled nothing seen before.”36
A whole study could be devoted to the role of architectural environments
in Romantic painterly or even literary explorations,37 up to Gérard de Nerval’s
“Aurelia” of 1855, the story of the author’s progressive fall into madness in
which the protagonist dreams of “a gradual slide into the successive layers
of buildings of different ages … airy, alive, traversed by a thousand plays of
lights.”38 But animations of architectural scenes through a “thousand plays
of lights” were not only literary tropes in the late Restoration. They had
become a popular spectacle, thanks to Daguerre and Bouton’s ingenious
and hugely successful dioramas. The invention was a particularly effective
means to achieve dramatic illusions of being transported to other places and
other times. The technique consisted in hanging huge translucent paintings
on the stage of a darkened auditorium. By changing front and back lights
on specific areas of the layered scene created, the depiction acquired
striking depth and realism. The true nature of the dioramic spectacle,
and the reason of its success, however, was not so much its realism as its
bewitching quality. The diorama had a kind of iridescent character that
seemed to capture the very essence of the imaginary. The fact that historical
scenes were the dominant subject of representation further emphasized
the fantastic nature of the spectacle. In their classic study on Daguerre,
Helmut and Alison Gernshein even underscored the diorama’s capacity to
suggest motion, in some instances accompanied by appropriate sound, and
thus anticipating cinema.39 The somewhat eerie and spectral quality of the
effect gives special relief to Roland Barthes’s remark in Camera Lucida that
the “frenzy to be lifelike” can only be a “mythic denial of an apprehension
of death.”40 The question of architectural polychromy, over and above the
archaeological debates proper, was intimately related to such “technical
effects of presence”41 and the obsession of the era for “resurrecting” the past.
By subjugating the material to its sensational effect, by transforming walls
into a shimmering substance, color was a magic spell that transformed the
reality of buildings into a phantasm.
58
architecture and the historical imagination
Historical Drama
Viollet-le-Duc himself expressed his reluctance to take lessons from the
diorama. Writing from Italy in 1836, he mocked the device in terms that can
serve as an oblique substantiation of Barthes’s observation:
The dioramas of M. Daguerre made to produce illusion, clever machines to bring the
spectator as close as possible to nature, were never able to match even a quarter of
the popularity of a good painting at the salon? Why? Because the diorama smells of
machines, and that man, fortunately, loathes machines.42
Yet, Viollet-le-Duc’s architectural drawings of these years were in no small
part inspired by the very sort of clever illusions from which Daguerre’s
experiments in painterly illusion had themselves originated: theatrical
sets for contemporary melodrama. Leading stage designer Pierre-Charles
Cicéri, for whom Viollet-le-Duc worked intermittently between 1832 and
1836, had been Daguerre’s collaborator and had profited from techniques
borrowed from the diorama. More than any other, his work developed all
the powers of painting and scenic space to instil a sense of movement and
mood (see Fig. 4.2). Similarly, Viollet-le-Duc will seek to create architectural
representations that reached the level of a pictorial drama.
Many of Viollet-le-Duc’s drawings of the period were indeed highly singular
in staging historical events in the architectural environment depicted, the past
being evoked not merely through decor, as in Duban’s fantasies, but through
scenes taking place before our eyes as in the work of painters or on the theatre
stage. His view of the Taormina theatre frozen during performance is the
culmination of a series of pictorial experiments in historical dramatizations.
The earliest example, and one of the more revealing, is his restoration of
the Chambre des Comptes, exhibited at the 1836 Salon a few weeks before
he departed for his two-year journey in Italy (Fig. 2.7).43 The choice of
subject was no doubt influenced by the rise of interest in the early French
Renaissance in Romantic architectural circles.44 More specifically, it reflected
the current focus of attention on the Palais de Justice,45 Huyot having just been
commissioned to design a comprehensive architectural plan to reorganize,
renovate, and expand the old medieval complex. Without doubt, Viollet-leDuc, who had just fathered a son in July 1835, chose the subject in the hope
of securing a more lucrative (and more architectural) appointment than his
teaching post at the École de Dessin. But the work had another significant
impetus: the restoration project for Sainte-Chapelle exhibited at the Salon the
year before by the architect Jean-Baptiste Lassus, a student of Labrouste and
future collaborator of Viollet-le-Duc. Lassus had submitted his project to the
Salon as a first study for a larger monograph on the old Palais, demonstrating
a new level of expertise in medieval restoration which contrasted with the
Neoclassical architect Peyre’s highly criticized project of 1833.46 If we put
aside architect Alphonse de Gisors’ careful restoration of the Salle des pas
perdus of the Palais de Justice, begun around 1833, it was the first systematic
architecture painted
59
restoration project of a Gothic monument, and caused quite a stir.47 L’Artiste
singled it out as the only worthy submission of the architecture section: unlike
the futile historicist exercises exhibited beside it, wrote the anonymous critic,
it had the capacity to evoke “great historical memories” and could play a
role in the conception of modern public monuments.48 It earned Lassus a gold
medal. The drawings are unfortunately lost but, judging from the rest of his
work including his monograph on Sainte-Chapelle published much later, we
may assume that traditional measured drawings dominated the set.
Viollet-le-Duc was struck by Lassus’s restoration, and his own restoration
of the Chambre des Comptes, originally flanking Sainte-Chapelle, was a
direct response to it. In his obituary of Lassus published in 1857, Viollet-leDuc claimed that it was the conjunction of these two projects which brought
the two men together for the first time.49 Yet Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration of the
Chambre des comptes was of an altogether different register than Lassus’s
project for Sainte-Chapelle. Built by Louis XII in the early sixteenth century,
the building had been demolished by fire in 1737 and was thus known only
through engravings. Instead of projecting an exacting restoration based on
orthographic drawings as Lassus had done, Viollet-le-Duc decided to rely
entirely on his talent as painter and provide a single tableau, depicting, together
with the Chambre des comptes itself, the scene of a “great historical memory”:
the massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day of 1572. His watercolor rendering
foregrounds the building that fills the frame: the monument, seen frontally
with its picturesque silhouette richly ornamented with allegorical figures
2.7 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Restored
View of the old
Chambre des
Comptes in Paris,
built in 1499 and
burnt in 1737.
The monument is
shown as it was
during the turmoil
of 1572. 1836.
Watercolor. 62.0
× 95.5 cm. Former
collection of the
Duc de Nemours.
Private collection
60
architecture and the historical imagination
and statues and dramatically set in contrasting light, is without question the
prominent element. Yet the scene remains more historical than architectural in
nature. Immersed in the atmosphere of the past, the Chambre des comptes is
seen through a historical haze conveyed by modulated lighting effects, scenes
of battle, and glimpses at the old medieval fabric to the left. Viollet-le-Duc’s
relative indifference to archaeological issues is manifest from his neglect of
orthographic drawings and also from his having simply lifted Israel Silvestre’s
seventeenth-century engraving of the building. Apart from a few adjustments
and greater precision in the architectural details, the view depicted by Violletle-Duc is so close to Silvestre’s that we can safely assume that Viollet-le-Duc
copied—if not traced directly—the latter’s print. The challenge left to him
was thus to render an atmosphere, transforming Silvestre’s black and white
line drawing into a historical impression. Viollet-le-Duc’s Chambre des comptes
is indeed a scene from the past, a rendering that could well have illustrated
a historical novel, such as Prosper Mérimée’s recent 1572, Chronique du règne
de Charles IX (1829), which depicted with witty scepticism—and not without
relish—the violent passions of the era of the wars of religion.
In one of his rare reviews of the Salon, Mérimée had noted the tendency
toward drama of the new school [of painting] casting such ties with literature
as a negative characteristic of modern painting: “It is an entire drama that
is being narrated, not a detached and complete scene. Within such system,
painting is nothing but literature transformed [la peinture n’est, à vrai dire, que
de la littérature transformée].”50 Mérimée’s comment alerts us to the fact that,
if Lassus’s acclaimed restoration of Sainte-Chapelle may have provided the
impetus for Viollet-le-Duc’s decision to depict the Chambre des comptes,
historical genre paintings provided its true representational context. Wars
of religion were a popular subject among Romantic painters in the 1830s.
Stigmatising religious intransigence became a way to welcome the new
liberalism of the government of the July monarchy. In the Salon of 1833, the
painter Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury had exhibited a sensational and quite
gruesome canvas illustrating a scene from Saint Bartholomew’s Day, which
brought him instant fame: the Assassinat de Brion, gouverneur du prince de Conti
(Fig. 2.8). Robert-Fleury’s composition is focused on the extremely violent
scene of Charles Briou’s murder, but the architectural context in which it is set
is crucial in setting the dramatic tone, notably the bright crimson red of the bed
curtains and desktop. A view of the dense old Paris can be glimpsed through
the window at the left of the painting, an oblique opening onto the medieval
social world. Viollet-le-Duc literally lifted that capsule and inserted it on the
left of his Chambre des comptes watercolor. In Viollet-le-Duc’s drawing, the
emphasis has obviously shifted from the historical events to the architecture.
But that shift does not abolish the historical content since the building itself
has the status of an actor within the history portrayed. The statues staring at
the scene, the staircase linking the public place to the theatrical loggia above,
augment rather than dwarf the narrative potential of the picture. Architecture
is mobilized within the medley of dramatic events taking place before it.
2.8 Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury. The Assassination of Brion, Tutor of the Prince
of Conti at the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 24 August 1572. 1833. Oil on canvas.
164.0 × 130.0 cm. Musée du Louvre. Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY
62
architecture and the historical imagination
Like historical genre painters, Viollet-le-Duc develops a political argument
in support of a secular and liberal idea of civic justice. Structured in two
distinct halves, his Chambre des comptes couldn’t be more transparent, at
least judging from the now available reproduction: on the shadowy left are
Catholics fighting Huguenots, despotic rule battling religious fanaticism; on
the sunny right is a group of figures listening to a man standing on a small
podium, symbol of justice through deliberation. Providing the backdrop for
this tableau in which speech is pitted against brute force is the Chambre des
comptes itself, an administrative institution denoting bourgeois society, but
displaying in its central niche a statue of Louis XII, thereby figuring an alliance
between the king and bourgeoisie. The political argument aside, however,
it is the wedding of archaeological concerns with painterly representation
that is most striking in Viollet-le-Duc’s watercolor. His work in stage design
was of course determinant, a type of representation where architectural
monuments supported melodramatic actions. But the most famous and
successful precedent for a “picturesque archaeology” remained Baron
Taylor’s Voyages pittoresques et romantiques en ancienne France. Viollet-le-Duc
started his decade-long collaboration on the Voyages pittoresques just before he
rendered his Chambre des comptes restoration.51 His contribution limited itself
to the design of elaborate decorative borders, free ornamental compositions
that extended on the page to some nine to twelve centimetres in width with
even greater depth at the top. Buildings were not the most prominent subjects
of his entourages, which are often purely decorative compositions. When
scenes are drawn, it is “genre” illustration with a predilection for a cloakand-dagger atmosphere, not unlike his Chambre des comptes. But, more than
these entourages, it is the lithographs contained in the early volumes of the
Voyages pittoresques that are closest to his restoration, particularly those drawn
by the painter Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard, in which historical scenes were
often staged scenographically at the base of the monument depicted. Even
where no historical figures were shown, dramatic lighting effects suffused the
monument in a historical haze, as in Viollet-le-Duc’s drawing.
Italian Interlude
With a sum of 6,000 francs promised by the king’s Intendant général for the
watercolor of the Banquet des Dames, Viollet-le-Duc was able to project an
18-month journey to Italy and Sicily between March 1836 and September
1837.52 When the Comte Jean-Pierre de Montalivet replaced Baron AgathonJean-François Fain at the Intendance, he found it impossible to honor the
latter’s extravagant promise, and was able to release only 1,000 francs of state
funds for the rather undistinguished painting.53 Viollet-le-Duc learned this
bad news when he was already halfway through his journey, his father, uncle,
aunt, and father-in-law generously chipping in to allow him to continue as
planned. The whole Italian journey was in fact a family affair. Leaving for
architecture painted
63
Sicily via Naples with his friend Léon Gaucherel on March 12, Viollet-le-Duc
was joined by his wife Elisa, as he called her, and his brother Adolphe on
August 14 in Livorno. The four travelled together as a tight and fairly cheerful
group, though family tensions loomed large at the beginning. Elisabeth,
daughter of Georges-François Tempier, owner of a prominent toy shop on
the Boulevard des Italiens,54 had not been welcomed by Delécluze and his
sister (the “clan Chabanais,” as Viollet-le-Duc called them), who had higher
expectations for Eugène. Adolphe, a future landscape painter only 19 years
old and still very much under the influence of his uncle, was consequently
not always kind to his sister-in-law. From the Italian correspondence, we
can follow the evolution of their relationship, which tends to improve as
the trip unfolds. What is probably more significant to note, however, is the
domineering character of Viollet-le-Duc within the family. Writing to Elisa
while she was still in Paris, Eugène reflects on how to handle his brother’s
aggressive behavior:
I am writing to Adolphe, but I am not certain which tone to adopt. Papa seems to
encourage me to speak to him frankly about the sort of power he allows our amiable
family [Delécluze and his aunt Sophie Clérambourg] to hold over him, but what can
I tell him? the truth? He will not believe it. I will again receive mean complaints, and
our magnanimous father will not support me. … No, I don’t want to meddle in that
business; first, because Adolphe is too entangled, embedded, and wrapped up in the
Chabanais for me to hope to be able to pull him out of their claws through my sheer
eloquence from 700 leagues away; … and then because they always say that I am the
one who is influencing my father, who wants to control my brother and everyone
around me, that I am the little Napoleon of the family and am seeking sovereign
power. I won’t do anything, as I am tired of hearing from a bunch of fools and
gullible persons that everything at home goes as I want it to go, which does not reflect
my character and my tastes; if I had the ambition to dominate, it would be below me
to become the little sovereign of such petty minds, and the rue Chabanais does not
offer the heart and spirit enough for me to want to settle my little kingdom there.55
Viollet-le-Duc’s last remark offers a premonition of his future ambition
within France’s patrimonial institutions. Despite all his disclaimer, the
correspondence leaves no doubt that he dominated the family household,
having considerable sway even over his kind and loving father. His trip to
Italy served to enshrine, as it were, his leadership role in the future destiny
of the family. During this long and tiring journey, his work will have priority
over everything else within the small group.
His objective in Italy, as would be expected of any young artist, was to
“form his talent,”56 to mature his taste, and to bring back material to launch
his career. In part, the trip was a means of overcoming the stigma of not
having attended the École des Beaux-Arts, and being able to see the classical
sites as if he had himself won the Grand Prix de Rome. During his seven-month
stay in Rome, he would spend much time with the pensionnaires, assiduously
frequenting the studio of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, director of the
Académie de France at the Villa Médici. At one level, it was a return to the
rut of Delécluze’s conservative pedagogy. But experiencing the monuments
64
architecture and the historical imagination
of classical architecture first-hand, was also a means of getting rid of the
mediation of his uncle. That goal, confirmed by the acrimonious comments
against Delécluze that runs through his entire Italian correspondence, may
explain why he maintained a rather academic outlook in Italy. He focused
his attention on medieval buildings, notably the Byzantine architecture of
the Normans in Palermo, the Basilica of San Marco and the Doge’s Palace in
Venice, but the Greek antiquities of Sicily and the canonic works in the classical
tradition at Rome were his most important subjects. He showed no interest
in more primitive architecture—Cyclopean constructions, or the funerary
structures of the Etruscans which had so fascinated Duban and Labrouste a
decade earlier. His greatest admiration went to Raphael and Bramante, hardly
a risky predilection. At Ingres’ advice, he painstakingly copied frescos by
Pinturicchio and Raphael, producing a monumental rendering of one bay of
Raphael’s Vatican Loggia, which he would later exhibit at the Salon de Paris.57
Viollet-le-Duc’s relationship with Ingres is, of course, worth pondering.
Cordial right from the start, their rapport progressively grew into a real
affection, a closeness encouraged by the fact that their mutual wives got along
remarkably well. Ingres was, of course, the artist that Delécluze had trumpeted
in the Journal des débats as the true heir of the Davidian ideal and the French
tradition as a whole, praise that Ingres himself had taken to heart. Viollet-leDuc’s connection with Delécluze was thus the best conceivable introduction
to Ingres. But the fast friendship that quickly developed between them points
to deeper affinities. In his witty account of Viollet-le-Duc’s sojourn in Rome,
Robin Middleton rightly points to a commonality between the temperaments of
the two men, who possessed the same sort of gravitas.58 Viollet-le-Duc seemed
indeed to have enjoyed the special solemnity of Ingres’ salon. He was also
undoubtedly attracted to the prestige surrounding the great painter. Having
assimilated his uncle’s extremely high opinion of Ingres, he sought to learn
directly from the master, probably hoping to profit from that influence in
the future. While in Rome, Viollet-le-Duc thus curbed his Romantic leanings,
diligently absorbing the academic tradition. He spent most of his time with the
students at the Villa Médici, conducting himself as the equal of the recipients of
the Prix de Rome and mocking the Romantic faction. But as Middleton has well
explained, his relationship with the pensionnaires was not without conflict. He
notably antagonized the future designer of Les Halles centrales, Victor Baltard,
who could not tolerate Viollet-le-Duc’s privileged relation with Ingres. But
in spite of these turbulences, the latter managed to keep his friendship with
Ingres intact throughout. Only years later, when Viollet-le-Duc rose to be the
most implacable enemy of the Académie, would Ingres turn against him, most
notably during the attempted reform of the École des Beaux-Arts in 1863.
As we’ve seen, one of Viollet-le-Duc’s most sustained interests while
traveling in Italy was architectural polychromy, a topic certainly no longer
antithetical to the academic stance in the mid-1830s. He produced a great
number of lavish measured drawings of polychrome details of many key
Sicilian and Italian monuments, such as the mosaic floor of the Palatine
architecture painted
65
2.9 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Polychrome
carpentry of the
Cathedral in
Messina, Sicily.
1836. Watercolor,
ink, graphite,
gouache and
gilding. 99.2 ×
65.4 cm. MAP.
© Ministère
de la Culture /
Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand
Palais / Art
Resource, NY
Chapel in Palermo, the wooden ceiling of the Cathedral of Messina, the
marble veneer of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Cathedral in Florence, the
vaults of the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi (Fig. 2.9). His decision to copy
the Vatican frescoes, though suggested by Ingres, remained respectful of
Hittorff’s ideas on polychromy insofar as the latter had singled out Raphael
as the great preserver of the polychrome “system” of the ancients. Through
66
architecture and the historical imagination
Ingres, however, Viollet-le-Duc may have been sensitized to an approach
closer to Duban’s refined and more idiosyncratic decorative style. Violletle-Duc’s copy work at the Vatican may indeed have been carried out with
Duban’s new Palais des Études at the École des Beaux-Arts in mind. The
Balze brothers, disciples of Ingres and then pensionnaires in Rome, would
soon be commissioned to paint frescoes based on Raphael’s Loggia in the
second floor galleries of the Palais. Viollet-le-Duc would share Raymond
Balze’s scaffolding in the Vatican.59 Just as his Chambre des comptes targeted
Huyot, his copying Raphael may have been done to attract Duban’s
attention. Whatever the case may be, Viollet-le-Duc’s interest in polychromy
remained unfocused. Nowhere in his extensive correspondence do we gain
any indication of a sustained effort to discuss the architectural consequences
of the use of color. It is almost casually that he spoke of his choice: “Knowing
how to draw and handle watercolor reasonably well, I started to study the
most beautiful examples of painted architecture.”60
What truly obsessed Viollet-le-Duc in Italy was the not unrelated question
of depicting architecture in painting: how to capture architectural experience
in representation. He thus maintained the pictorial concerns characteristic of
his work since the beginning. Painting was, of course, not an unusual activity
for architects traveling in Italy. Within the French academic tradition, the
ever-increasing perfection of Beaux-Arts measured drawings is legendary. It
was partly a reflection of the need to create ideal representations to support
an academic canon, and partly a consequence of the system of competition
in place at the École des Beaux-Arts. The pictorial quality of architectural
drawings steadily increased all through the nineteenth century, first within
the traditional mode of orthographic projection, and later, in the second half
of the century, through the increasing use of perspective views. One key
opportunity to show the flourishing of pictorial techniques was the Envoi
de Rome, an archaeological investigation carried out in Italy by winners
of the Grand Prix and sent back in Paris every year to be exhibited. These
records of ancient architecture were exceptional: delicate ink washes that
considerably heightened the tactile presence of the antique remains, making
them susceptible to translation into new architectural works. At some
level, Duban’s historical fantasies were a natural extension of this mode of
idealized representation that gave a new legibility to historical fragments.
It is significant that, apart from these occasional painterly fantasies, Duban
and his three Romantic friends more or less adhered to academic methods
during their Italian sojourn, contenting themselves with pushing the
analytic dimension further and heightening the representation of surface
texture. But the importance of pictorial representations would become so
great that an ambitious architecture student such as Victor Baltard would
find it worthwhile to study painting in tandem with architecture at the École
des Beaux-Arts.
Viollet-le-Duc’s concentration on pictorial representations was therefore
not unusual. Yet I would argue that his work in Italy occasioned a distinct
architecture painted
67
shift within that tradition, most notably, his privileging of three-dimensional
views at the expense of orthographic projections. “I didn’t take any detailed
measurements of ancient buildings, nor did I draw any plans of palaces;”
he wrote from Sicily to his father, “I focused upon general aspects, upon
the overall proportions of monuments and their appearance … neglecting
therefore what has already been done and redone so many times before, in
other words orthographic drawings.”61 A pictorial grasp of the “appearance”
of monuments was Viollet-le-Duc’s chief method of analysis. The need for
accuracy was important in Viollet-le-Duc’s mind: he mocked the amateur
tourists who drew clichéd images, emphasizing in letters to his father the
immense difficulty of faithfully capturing the proportions and character of
Italian monuments.62 The precise hand of the draftsman is always felt in his
drawings. He deliberately avoided overt picturesque effects. But the mere
objective record of a building wasn’t the fundamental goal. He wished for a
heightened record of architectural experience. As always, trusting his talent
as a painter, Viollet-le-Duc wished to distinguish himself as an architect by
expressing more and better.
It is thus not surprising that Viollet-le-Duc sought in Italy the advice of
painters, Ingres above all, but also Nicolas Boguet. Certainly one of the most
curious aspects of Viollet-le-Duc copying Raphael is that the painstaking
work has all the character of the work of a “copiste,” the arduous labor of
a painter in training rather than of an architect. His pictorial focus also
explains why he was so deeply offended when Ingres’ students at the Villa
Médici made derogatory comments about his drawings.63 It did not come to
his mind to respond to these young painters that his drawings were chiefly
of architectural interest, as the painter’s eye was indeed the true test for the
success of his research in architectural rendition.
Viollet-le-Duc’s pictorial inspirations in Italy were quite varied, and
perhaps less academic than his architectural predilection would lead one
to believe. It is difficult to identify Ingres’ influence, apart from the analytic
precision of his drawing, a manner he anyway had absorbed long ago from
Delécluze. He seemed to have drawn a great deal from the paintings of
François-Marius Granet, another student of David, close friend of Ingres,
who was famous for his religious interiors.64 Viollet-le-Duc was acquainted
with Granet thanks to his father, who knew the painter well following the
latter’s nomination as curator of the new historical museum at Versailles
in 1833.65 It was Granet, not Delécluze, who had kindly provided Violletle-Duc with a letter of introduction to Boguet. The Choir of the Capuchin
Church, begun in Rome in 1812, was Granet’s most celebrated painting,
depicting religious life through the dramatic use of backlighting and hieratic
symmetry. Stephen Bann has drawn attention to the common use of backlit
scenes in dioramas and Granet’s Capuchin Church series.66 One could also
point to the influence of theatrical stage design. Viollet-le-Duc’s attraction to
such pictorial drama is certainly what ties his Italian drawings most directly
to his earlier work. Some of his most ambitious paintings carried out in Italy
2.10 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Capella reale in Palermo. 1836. Watercolor. 48.5 × 32.5 cm.
From Le voyage d’Italie d’Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1836–1837, 1987. Private collection
architecture painted
69
2.11 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Interior of Sienna
Cathedral. 1836.
Watercolor and
graphite. 47.2
× 43.5. MAP.
© Ministère
de la Culture /
Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand
Palais / Art
Resource, NY
were church interiors, obviously appreciative as he was, like Granet, of the
concentrated interiority of such places. His views of the Palatine Chapel in
Palermo (Fig. 2.10) and Siena Cathedral (Fig. 2.11)—if more draftsmanlike
than Granet’s intriguing Capuchine Church—manipulate color, light, and
point of view in order to intensify the presence of ritual. But what is even
more noteworthy from an architectural standpoint is the presence of the
ritual scenes themselves: all of Viollet-le-Duc’s elaborate watercolors
painted in Italy include figures that add a narrative and sometimes haunting
character to his compositions, culminating in the view of the ancient theatre
at Taormina in full performance. Even his orthographic drawings were
sometimes “completed” with staged scenes, such as the elevations of the
portal of the Cathedral of Palermo and his monumental rendering of the
Doge’s Palace (Figs. 2.12 and 2.13). His interior of the Basilica of San Marco in
Venice stands out with its golden glow and mysterious figures in sumptuous
costumes sauntering about in various directions, truly ghosts floating from
the past. But even when drawing modern figures, he is careful to select those
2.12 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Lateral portal of Cathedral of Palermo. 1836.
Watercolor, ink and gouache. 45.6 × 27.6 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
architecture painted
71
that still wear traditional dress. In his drawings of the interior of the Palatine
Chapel and Siena Cathedral, he included scenes of religious devotion. In his
watercolor of the lower chapel of the Convent of San Bernardo at Subiaco,
he included two women in traditional costume climbing the stairs. These
narratives of ideal use supplementing the architecture were obvious signs of
a participation in the original meaning of the building. Such scenes allowed
the restoration, not of the building, but of a historical reality. As Bann
once noted with regard to Richard Bonington’s topographical drawings
of Normandy, the figures drawn by Viollet-le-Duc are clearly part of an
imaginative projection, marking the building as belonging, mysteriously, to
two separate time scales.67 The image is no longer a passive archaeological
record, but a shifter between past and present.
It is thus the intensity of his desire for historical absorption that stands
out as the most original aspect of Viollet-le-Duc’s Italian journey. A few
passages of Viollet-le-Duc’s Sicilian correspondence illustrate the point.
Sicily, and later Rome and Venice, cast Viollet-le-Duc into a special state
of mind. He described the island to his father as a sacred preserve, holding
remnants of beauties no longer attainable by the modern artist. He speaks
of a “lost paradise of art” that stimulated his “faculté restauratrice”68: “How
much history and memories embellish stones! How do monuments of simple
beauty become sublime when we think of all the centuries, of all the events
of which they have been the inalterable witnesses.”69 The ravishment was
not generated by the perfection of the architecture, but by the monuments’
capacity to transport him into a historical trance. The enjoyment of such
immersion in history was complemented or actualised in Sicily by the
character of the inhabitants, their presumed original simplicity, charm and
hospitality having seduced Viollet-le-Duc. In letters to his wife and father,
he repeatedly praised the exceptional peace of the island in sharp contrast
to Paris, and especially the hostility of the Chabanais: “No one [in Sicily]
2.13 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Facade of the
Doge’s Palace,
Venice. 1836.
Watercolor. 61.5
× 133.0 cm. MAP.
© Ministère
de la Culture /
Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand
Palais / Art
Resource, NY
72
architecture and the historical imagination
desires to upset us, no one spends his whole life and resources tormenting
us.”70 An exceptional enclave where historical traditions, social harmony,
and even the natural world remained intact and impervious to the harmful
effects of modern civilization, Sicily demonstrated the possibility for a
perfect osmosis between the individual, his society, and the environment.
“Ah!” exclaimed Viollet-le-Duc “If I were not subjugated by ambition, by this
desire to do something that rises above the crowd, how well we would live
here. … We would be so tranquil.”71 His meticulous drawing of the interior
of the Palatine Chapel in Palermo, which depicts the calm celebration of a
mass, illustrates the sentiment well.
More generally, it is the presence of women figures, so prominent in many
of Viollet-le-Duc’s major Italian drawings, that best capture his search for
an unmediated experience. At one level, it can be read as one of the familiar
codes of nineteenth-century Orientalist representations, feminine presence
easing the absorption for male viewers. This gendered role is perhaps most
obvious in Viollet-le-Duc’s rich watercolors of medieval buildings drawn
in Italy, such as the Subiaco composition mentioned above. But even the
panoramic reconstruction of the ancient theatre at Taormina manages to
introduce a feminine register: not only is the view taken from one end of the
women’s gallery, but three female figures graciously adorn the roof of the
scena, standing between the natural prospect and the theatrical performance.
The Orientalist strategy does not prevent Viollet-le-Duc from investing
more personal desires in the female characters inhabiting his drawings. His
contrasting of the peacefulness and natural innocence of Sicilians with the
“tormenting” Parisian family scene, though still circumscribable within a
familiar Orientalist fantasy, points to the overlaying of a personal history
with the historicizing representation. In this regard, it is the recurring lone
female figure, often kneeling in devotion in church interiors that seems
most noteworthy. The figure, often foregrounded and seen from the back
or the side, act as a projective device into the image but also as gatekeeper
to the historical world embodied by the architecture beyond, bringing in a
moralizing or expiatory tone to the representation. It gives the maternal key
to his architectural representation, emphasizing interiority and synesthetic
wholeness. The view of the interior of Siena Cathedral and the Palatine
Chapel in Palermo are most striking in this regard, though the conical
disk of the theatre at Taormina could also be construed as a representative
specimen. The Palatine Chapel drawing set up an intriguing set of relations,
the solitary female figure in the foreground, turned slightly to the side, an
intermediary not only between the viewer and the scene as a whole, but
also between the viewer and the male figure ominously standing in the
organ mezzanine. However modest, the most telling drawing is probably
the elevation of the lateral door of the Cathedral of Palermo. Below the
image of the ideal family in the form of the Virgin and Child fresco in
the niche above the arch, is the equally archetypical scene of the woman
dressed in black giving alms to a crippled beggar. The image could well
architecture painted
73
serve as a frontispiece to Viollet-le-Duc’s novella L’idiot de Véselai, with two
mother-and-child relationships juxtaposed: the Virgin and Child above,
with the benefactress and the cripple underneath. It is the feminine figure
that negotiates access to the reparatory space of the interior of the medieval
monument. These drawings are all at once historical dramatizations and
dramatizations of desire, both repetitive and regressive.
La poésie sauvage
Another type of pictorial work greatly absorbed Viollet-le-Duc during the
1830s: his mountain landscapes. The “restorative” character of Viollet-leDuc’s architectural imagination gains new heights when we consider his
infatuation with “la nature sauvage … silencieuse et grande.”72 Just as the vast
monochrome panorama of the “existing” site at Taormina gave a cosmogonic
resonance to the colorfully restored “historical” view, so the whole series of
Viollet-le-Duc’s depiction of barren mountain sites can provide us with the
mythic, chaotic backdrop to his search for a totalizing historical experience.
In terms of numbers alone, the landscapes rival the architectural drawings.
The first date from 1831, though he drew the bulk of them during his journey
through the Pyrenees of 1833, a five-month hike undertaken the year after his
mother’s death.73 While in Italy, he drew a few mountain sceneries, especially
the crater of Etna. Only much later, in the late 1860s and 1870s, will Viollet-leDuc return to the mountains with a similar intensity of feeling. Standing at the
beginning and end of his career, these mountain journeys served to expand
the perspective of Viollet-le-Duc’s thought. In the later period, research on
mountain formation accompanied new reflections on universal history
and racial movement. In his youth, the brutal masses of rocks served as a
soundboard to both his bereavement and his thirst for an immutable faith.
On one of his earliest mountain drawings, a bold representation in graphite
of the Puy-du-Dôme dating from July 1831, Viollet-le-Duc wrote at the top of
the sheet, “Only mountains do not move.”74
Viollet-le-Duc’s early landscapes do not form a homogeneous set. A good
number of drawings are unremarkable, composed in a manner not untypical
of picturesque travels, including the occasional mountain landscapes found
in Baron Taylor’s Voyages pittoresques et romantiques. In contrast, a small group
of watercolors stand out for their uncanny affinity to the manner of German
Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, a surprising kinship when one
considers that Friedrich’s paintings were virtually unknown in France.75 The
Grotte à Biarritz, the Port de Vénasque, and the view of the Vallée d’Auzun, all from
the journey through the Pyrenees, express a strong subjective engagement
with the natural landscape. The Vallée d’Auzun is especially noteworthy (Fig.
2.14). It includes the Ruckenfigur familiar in German Romantic landscapes,
the halted traveler seen from the back contemplating the distant horizon. The
lounging figure, clearly a stand-in for the artist or the beholder, speaks at
74
2.14 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Bottom of the
Azun Valley taken
from the Pourges
Mountain, HautesPyrénées. 1833.
Watercolor. 20.5
× 27.3 cm. MAP.
© Ministère
de la Culture /
Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand
Palais / Art
Resource, NY
architecture and the historical imagination
great length of Viollet-le-Duc’s meditative posture in front of nature’s great
spectacle. The lonely bird in the distance concretizes his aspirations. But
what is most telling—and most Friedrich-like—is the absence of a middle
ground, causing a rift between foreground and background. Nature is seen
at a distance, through a seemingly unbridgeable gap between the here and
the there, a sentiment also expressed in many passages of his correspondence
during the journey through the Pyrenees.76
If nature can be reached, it is only in the inanimate world of desolate
mountain heights. A good number of Viollet-le-Duc’s mountain drawings,
and not the least interesting, could be labelled “merely” descriptive (Fig.
2.15). They demonstrate Viollet-le-Duc’s early interest in geology (he
collected minerals from a very young age). They show him attentive to the
earth’s physical fabric, but mostly fascinated by its chaotic character without
any overt pictorial filter. In these drawings of sandstone boulders, granite
ledges, and masses of fallen rocks, the only dominant form is the earth itself.
The composition is often decentralized and monochrome. Viollet-le-Duc was
greatly attracted to these sites of great desolation:
All around there is only rubble, snow, and forests; blocks of granite erupt in the midst
of fir trees, all of this speaks of destruction, devastation, death. It is horribly sad, but
what beautiful lines. … I found myself at home in the midst of these beautiful horrors
that I love so much.77
architecture painted
75
His contentment reflected a Romantic desire to immerse oneself in nature’s
chaotic power. Already in the 1830s, Viollet-le-Duc was captivated by nature’s
formative energies. For him, mountains were not just majestic masses, but
active bodies whose wild power was the archetype of nature’s vitality, the
most vivid expression of “the great laws of the universe,” “puissance mère
that commands to all others.”78 Viollet-le-Duc wrote these words about his
climb up to the seething crater of Mount Etna in 1836, but already during
his journey in the Pyrenees, he often wrote to his father of a similar sense
of awe. An unusually expressive drawing from that trip depicts the marble
dome of the Pène de Lhéris with a strange elasticity as if constituted of thick,
white maternal skin (Fig. 2.16). The contrasting green prairie undulating in
the foreground, with its grazing cows completes that image of the “puissance
mère.” That primal force was not blind or undirected in Viollet-le-Duc’s
mind, but partook of “a great divine principle” that yearned “to balance
fortune and misfortune for the greater good.”79 At the peaks of mountains,
where “men no longer have any powers, nature so great and so calm cruelly
takes its revenge for the stupidities that travelers in white gloves have said
about her.”80 Truly taken by a pantheistic vision, Viollet-le-Duc found at
the mountain a spiritual peace not dissimilar to the one experienced on the
island of Sicily, “soothing the ambition that, in the midst of society, often
torments me.”81 Nature and society were radically opposed. While hiking in
the middle of the night on the Pic du Midi at the end of his journey through
the Pyrenees, for example, Viollet-le-Duc compared the “rocky cliffs with
their hideous forms” seen under a lurid moonlight to the brilliance of a
Parisian night:
I was thinking of that beautiful night in this horrible landscape, and of the evenings
in Paris, dazzling with lights and flowers where what is ugliest is covered with such
beautiful and soft clothing, while here nature is raw, alone, left free in all its wild
fantasies, where what is ugly appears ugly, and what is beautiful appears beautiful.82
The artifices of civilization were a vain trifle compared to the undisguised
spontaneity of nature. But in juxtaposing the two, Viollet-le-Duc also alluded
to a potential continuity: remove the thin veneer of social graces and untamed
forces would be revealed beneath.
It will be one of Viollet-le-Duc’s life obsessions to seek out, like his lifelong
friend Prosper Mérimée, the presence of the wild within the human world. By
the beginning of the Second Empire, warfare became in his mind the closest
match for nature’s vitality within human society. In the 1830s, however, a
more poetic lens filtered his search. While in Italy, for example, he kept an eye
out for anything that possessed a poésie sauvage. Among his most profound
experiences in this regard was his visit to the small primitive stone village
of La Cervara set among old quarries on a barren outcrop of the Simbruini
mountain range east of Rome. The “savage ways, simple and solemn,” that he
had encountered there profoundly moved him, as had his ecstatic climbs of
Mount Etna or the Pyrenees.
2.15 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Bottom of the Cirque de Gavarnie. 1833. Ink wash and gouache.
22.0 × 28.0 cm. MAP. © CNAC/MNAM/Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.16 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Penne de Lhéris. 1833. Watercolor. 21.8 × 28.5 cm. MAP. © Ministère
de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
architecture painted
77
Everywhere, masses of fallen rocks, impassable footpaths, the horizon as far as
the eyes can see with the profiles of mountains that crisscross each other; in the far
background, between two escarpments, the sea appears as a mist blending with the
sky. … Contemplating that country so great, so sad, where only the wind is heard,
one thinks of Palestine.83
He particularly admired the peasant women:
A physiognomy wild and tough, eyes admirably cut, a hooked nose, an arched mouth
with lips parted in a permanent expression of scorn, a brown uniform skin, brilliant
eyes; their bodices are embroidered with golden or colored braid, their skirts blue
and folded, a shawl tied at their waist hangs at the back, … The sight was unique …
something primitive that was profoundly moving.84
The detailed description of the women’s costume alerts us that Viollet-le-Duc’s
experience, however genuine, was filtered through pictorial conventions
and a good dose of Orientalism. The village of La Cervara, isolated in a
wild landscape yet conveniently close to Rome, had been a favorite spot for
Romantic artists.85 It is unclear whether the painter Léopold Robert actually
made the pilgrimage to La Cervara but Viollet-le-Duc’s detailed description of
the physiognomy and colorful dress of the village women was undoubtedly
inspired by Robert’s famous series of portraits of the peasants of the Italian
campagna. A late student of David and close to Delécluze, Robert achieved
fame in the 1820s for his paintings of Italian banditi, which he depicted in
their bright clothing in mountainous landscapes around Rome very similar
to La Cervara. Delécluze greatly admired Robert’s capacity to contain a “force
sauvage” within Raphaelesque idealization, a frequent topic of discussion
between them when they were together in Rome in 1823–1824.86 Viollet-leDuc himself referred to the paintings of Robert when visiting Syracuse, noting
that the Sicilian men there, like the women of La Cervara, displayed features
“si graves, si sauvages.”87 He thought he could detect in these fierce but formally
perfect physiognomies the true character of the ancient Greeks.
Much later, in the first of his Entretiens sur l’architecture, Viollet-le-Duc will
make the progressive containment of savageness inherent to the evolutionary
process of Greek ideal beauty. His childhood shock at Notre-Dame, also
related in the first “Entretien,” was obviously his own model for the monstrous
power of art. His enthusiasm for the mountain village of La Cervara—so
closely mixed with his attraction for barren heights—is of a similar order: only
in a place so wild and so utterly estranged could Viollet-le-Duc find what he
was looking for. The enjoyment of temporary alienation was liberating not
merely as a titillating experience of exoticism, but as a means to gain contact
with primal creative forces.
Many of Viollet-le-Duc’s strongest architectural experiences in Italy were
triggered by the presence of a geological rawness, as if chaotic desolation
could best summon his “faculté restauratrice.” The theatre at Taormina set
high on a desolate mountain peak is the most obvious example, but there are
other revealing instances. In a pencil sketch of the Temple of Junon Lecine
2.17 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Temple of Junon Lecine at Agrigento. 1836.
Graphite. 24.2 × 32.8 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.18 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Views of the frigidarium of the Baths of Caracalla.
Graphite, wash and gouache. 28.4 × 44.7 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
architecture painted
79
at Agrigento, for instance, he emphasizes the colossal boulders that stand
menacingly in the foreground of the ruin, as if the temple was progressively
returning to its original geological state (Fig. 2.17). These masses of rocks
fired Viollet-le-Duc’s imagination: “There is no livelier and more profound
sensations than that felt when standing among these venerable rubbles. Bit
by bit the imagination restores these enormous monolithic walls, … and
soon the mind fills the place with people [bientôt on peuple tout cela].”88 In
Rome, the gigantic masses of the Colosseum and the Baths of Caracalla had
a similar effect (Fig. 2.18). His drawings of these monuments accentuate
their geological nature, distilling the buildings down to their brutal mass
and the sheer strength of the rock thanks to a brown monochrome wash
and very sharp shadows. Here again Granet may have provided some
inspiration: his series of partial views of the Colosseum heightened its
rawness, transforming the man-made monument into strange morsels of
nature.89 Blurring the boundaries between nature and history was a way
to return to the founding act. Not coincidentally, it was in the midst of the
Colosseum that Viollet-le-Duc was gripped by his most potent “historical”
fever90:
I go to the Colosseum, … I am exhausted; I sit down, and after much effort at trying
to decipher certain details about its construction, my imagination takes hold of me. I
see the Colosseum with its immense sea of tiers covered with the crowd of Romans;
… I see the purple velum stretched over this crowd whose murmur resembles that
of the sea from a distance; but then the murmur changes into cries of joy, wild cries,
and this arena so calm and silent today, I see covered in blood. But the great red cross
planted in the middle brings me back to reality; I then glance around me, and instead
of crowded tiers, there are only formless ruins, hollowed vaults, green shrubs, dust
and dilapidation.”91
The modern day dilapidation of the ancient amphitheatre, explained Violletle-Duc, was a form of “expiation” of the horrors of the ancient games.92 There
was a strange equilibrium between the ruthlessness of nature in reclaiming
possession of the ancient arena and the cruel gladiatorial spectacles. These
turbulent actions were related to Viollet-le-Duc’s own mental agitation as
he underwent his historical vision. In the letter to his father in which he
related the episode, he presented it as the product of a quasi-pathological
state of “stupefaction and bewilderment” following his arrival in Rome.
He wandered restlessly for days on end through the various sites of the
eternal city in total stupor, always gravitating toward the Colosseum.
Sitting inside, he fell into the momentary hallucination described above,
seeing the monument brought to its ancient life with the crowd cheering the
gladiators. Anticipating his latter restitution of the theatre at Taormina in
full performance, he drew an unusually free sketch of his vision, splashes of
watercolor appearing as blood thrown across the entire audience (Fig. 2.19).
But when he returned to reality, only dust and dilapidation remained. In the
last letter of his Italian trip, written from Geneva, Viollet-le-Duc asked his
father “why is the imagination always so much above the felt impression?”93
80
architecture and the historical imagination
How indeed can reality meet his mental world when, as he described it, that
mind “boils, devours everything, gives birth, restores, creates [Ma tête bout,
dévore tout, enfante, restaure, crée].”94
Viollet-le-Duc’s enjoyment at the “horrors” of mountains lay in their
concretizing that dichotomy. The strangely jagged heights transformed into
an imaginative terrain that put to test the normal capacity to grasp reality.
His pleasure partook of the aesthetic of the sublime but instead of leading to
a contemplative and passive awe, it triggered his own creative power. Here is
how he described to his father his fascination with the spectacle of the mouth
of the crater of Mount Etna:
The abyss is a powerful attraction to the imagination because it is so different from
everything that we see normally and also because it is truly beautiful and so much
above what one expects. These great, long smoking crevasses, these bold, jagged
peaks, cannot leave my memory, nor can the terrifying depth from which escapes a
thousand confused noises that form a sinister and wild melody, nor the vivid colors,
impossible to render, and the odor that comes by gusts to suffocate us.95
A set of three drawings capture remarkably well Viollet-le-Duc’s synesthetic
rapture at the seething crater (Fig. 2.20). These variants in light and color of
an identical object have been related to Monet’s cathedral or haystack series.96
But Viollet-le-Duc’s watercolors of Mount Etna are far from mere recordings
of fugitive impressions under changing daylight. They document instead the
inner energy of the mountain, a lurid and terrifying scene.
Viollet-le-Duc ascended Etna only a few days before he visited Taormina.
In fact, his written description of the climb was jotted down at Taormina
while he was drawing his great panoramic view of the remains of the ancient
theatre. Etna can be seen in the background of that image, the faint shadow of
its conical profile appearing in the distant left. Compared with the irridescent
crater, the barren ruins at Taormina seem like a dead landscape. Yet that
stillness is misleading, since thanks to Viollet-le-Duc’s imagination it will
come back to life. There is more than one analogy between the view of the
crater of Etna and the restored theatre filled with people watching Aeschylus’
Eumenides. They are both conical in form, concentrating energy, whether
natural or human. In both there is an undertone of fear: the “sinister and
wild melody” of a “thousand confused noises” at Etna; the gradual rousing
of the slumbering furies of the Eumenides.97 But what is most striking is the
hallucinatory character of both images: products of a disruption in normal
perception. The volcano is in fact the perfect metaphor for the hallucination:
internal energies erupting into a scintillating image as at the Colosseum. The
strange dichotomy, the non sequitur between the existing and restored state
of Taormina, is the best record of such eruption into representation. Violletle-Duc’s struggles to cohere via the mediation of a pictorial representation
is there given its most splendid, but also its last expression. From 1840, he
begins his career as restoration architect, and completely abandons the
pictorial experiments of the previous decade.
2.19 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Restored view of the interior of the Colosseum. 1837.
Watercolor. 21.0 × 33.4 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
2.20 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Upper crater of Etna. 1836. Watercolor, gouache
and graphite. 32.6 × 51.0 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
82
architecture and the historical imagination
Notes
1
See Stephen Bann’s “Representing Normandy,” in The Lens of Impressionism:
Photography and Painting along the Normandy Coast 1850–1874, ed. Carole
McNamara (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2009), 47–61.
2
Baron Taylor, Charles Nodier, and Alphonse de Cailleux, Voyages pittoresques et
romantiques en ancienne France, Ancienne Normandie, 18 vols. (Paris: Didot l’ainé,
1826), vol. 2, 48.
3
I paraphrase from Stephen Bann’s “Norman Abbey as Romantic mise-en-scène:
St. Georges de Boscherville in historical representation,” Conjuring the Real: The
Role of Architecture in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Rumiko Handa
and James Potter, eds. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 87.
4
“Il faut en entrant [au Mont Saint-Michel] quitter toute idée de notre civilisation,
il faut pour ainsi dire s’identifier avec les monuments, avec cette immense
tristesse qui semble ronger tout,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis,
Mont Saint-Michel, May 30, 1835, Les Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire d’une famille,
Documents et correspondances, ed. Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc (Geneva: Slatkine,
2000), hereafter LVLD, 316.
5
“Me pénétrer de leurs proportions, entrer dans leurs idées, sentir comme on les
a senties, et non point ne m’attacher qu’à les posséder matériellement sur des
feuilles de papier,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Angers, May
18, 1833, LVLD, 124.
6
“Nous nous levons à 5 h. ½, nous allons à la cathédrale et nous n’en revenons
qu’à 7 h. du soir. Je t’avouerai que tout en étant ereinté chaque soir, j’éprouve un
bien-être, une joie indéfinissable de pouvoir travailler ainsi de tout coeur devant
un si beau monument. Il faut voir cela comme nous le voyons, des journées
entières, pour goûter toutes les beautés réunies dans cette belle église; on a beau
dire, tout ce qui parle aux yeux, touche aussi le coeur, … cette lumière dorée
et sombre qui, au milieu de ces énormes piliers change comme les couleurs de
l’arc-en-ciel, cette voûte perdue dans un brouillard jaunâtre, ces grandes statues
longues qui, sous les portiques semblent une vénérable réunion de nos aïeuls
bénissant leurs arrières petits-neveux, tout cela me fait vibrer le cœur, et me
plonge dans des pensées d’une douceur inexprimable. … Je suis dans la joie de
mon âme lorsque je peux étudier de l’architecture, qu’elle soit antique, qu’elle
soit gothique peu m’importe, mais un beau morceau d’architecture est pour moi
… que sais-je? une chose respectable, que je voudrais entourer de soins, que je
puis me lasser de regarder et que j’aime comme un ami qui me comprend, aussi
je suis heureux tout le temps que je suis devant notre belle cathédrale, le soir
lorsque l’un après l’autre chaque étage rentre dans l’ombre et que son sommet
seul reste doré par le dernier rayon du soleil. Je le quitte à regret et voudrais être
au lendemain, alors j’entre dans sa voûte sombre, et là, dans un coin obscure, en
face de ce jubé couvert de figures qui retracent la plus belle histoire du monde,
devant ces grandes rosaces étincelantes des derniers rayons du jour, les larmes
me coulent dans les yeux, et je voudrais que ma vie s’éteignît avec les clartés des
vitraux. … Je suis bien enfant, n’est-ce pas, mais je suis plein de tout cela et je
ne puis m’empêcher d’en parler, ” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis,
Chartres, May 18, 1835, LVLD, 304–305.
7
Étienne Delécluze, “Exposition de 1840, ” Revue générale de l’architecture et des
travaux publics 1 (1840): cols. 295 and 302.
8
César Daly, “Exposition de 1840, ” RGATP 1 (1840): cols. 295 and 302.
architecture painted
9
83
Paul Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine (Paris: É. Champion,
1914), 19.
10
Alexandre Saint-Chéron, “De la décadence de l’École des Beaux-Arts, ” L’Artiste
8 (1834): 109.
11
Alphonse-Napoléon Didron, “Nous sommes Français,” La liberté, journal des arts
1 (1832): 26.
12
Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 51, n. 3.
13
Catalogues of the Salons of the 1830s list several thousand entries for the
painting section, but less than 100 for the architecture section; see Les catalogues
des Salons des Beaux-Arts, Pierre Sanchez and Xavier Seydoux, eds., 22 vols.
(Paris: Échelle de Jacob, 1999), vols. 3 and 4. Contributors to L’Artiste complained
repeatedly in the 1830s about the poor exposure of the architecture section,
“relegated to a lost corner of the Louvre,” “Salon de 1836, Architecture,” L’Artiste
11 (1836): 73.
14
See Louis Hautecoeur, Histoire de l’architecture classique en France, 7 vols. (Paris:
Picard, 1943–1957), vol. 6, 370–371.
15
Minutes of the meeting of the Conseil d’administration of the École de Dessin,
July 15, 1834, ANF, AJ 533.
16
Viollet-le-Duc was commissioned to paint three watercolors of the Tuileries
Palace in 1834 for the sum of 2,000 francs, and a year later, a large watercolor of
the Banquet des Dames held in the Tuileries. These paintings were exhibited in the
Salons of 1835 and 1836 respectively.
17
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Pisa, September 10, 1836, LI, 141.
18
It is difficult to know who had decided on such a large sum: the king himself,
Baron Fain, or Comte de Montalivet, Intendant de la liste civile, who would
actually make the purchase. Baron Fain, Premier secrétaire in Louis-Philippe’s
cabinet and Intendant de la liste civile before Montalivet, is the one who originally
set the high price for Viollet-le-Duc’s watercolor, but it is impossible to know
if he made that decision unilaterally. It should be noted that Viollet-le-Duc père
enjoyed the favors of both Baron Fain and Comte de Montalivet at the beginning
of the July Monarchy. In any case, the amount was considerably reduced: first
to 3,000 and then to 1,000 francs; see Le Voyage d’Italie d’Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
1836–1837, Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Jacques Aillagon, eds. (Paris:
École nationale des Beaux-Arts, 1987), 27, n. 2, 113, and LVLD, 336–337.
19
In the Salon of 1835, Viollet-le-Duc exhibited a project for a “Fountain Serving as
Kiosk” (now lost), which according to Delécluze was in keeping with the earlyRenaissance fashion that took hold of Romantic architects in the circle of Félix
Duban. Delécluze gently reproached the project in his review in the Journal des
débats (March 29, 1835): unpaged.
20
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, March 1, 1837, LI, 258. He was also
explicit about it toward the end of his trip: “Painting applied to architecture is
quite a new thing for us. I have already busied myself a great deal in Italy on
that combination of these two arts,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father EmmanuelLouis, June 19, 1837, Lettres d’Italie (1836–1837) addressées à sa famille, ed.
Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc (Paris: Léonce-Laget, 1971), hereafter LI, 315.
21
Here I paraphrase David Van Zanten, The Architectural Polychromy of the 1830s,
in the series Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts (New York and London:
Garland Publishing, 1977), 8.
84
architecture and the historical imagination
22
Daly, “Exposition de 1840, ” cols. 295 and 302.
23
On that form of architectural representation, see David Van Zanten’s excellent,
“The Harmony of Landscape, Architecture, and Community: Schinkel’s
Encounter with Huyot, 1826, ” Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The Drama of Architecture
(Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1994), 84–96.
24
Charles Lenormant, “Huyot,” Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne, 85 vols.
(1858), vol. 20, 232; quoted in David Van Zanten, “The Harmony of Landscape,”
96, n. 93.
25
Norman Bryson, Tradition and Desire: From David to Delacroix (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984), 54–55.
26
See Todd Porterfield, “David’s Sacre,” Staging Empire. Napoleon, Ingres and David,
Todd Porterfield and Susan Siegfried, eds. (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2006), 141–148. See also Susan Siegfried, “Materials of
the Historical Imaginary,” Ingres, Painting Reimagined (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 2009), 237–289.
27
Charles Blanc, “Considérations sur le costume,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 2 (1859):
264.
28
Barry Bergdoll, “‘en général de très honnêtes rebelles.’ Fragmentary Notes on a
Recently Discovered Album of French Romantic Architectural Compositions,”
Fragments: Architecture and the Unfinished. Essays Presented to Robin Middleton, Barry
Bergdoll and Werner Oechslin, eds. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006), 211.
29
David Van Zanten’s The Architectural Polychromy of the 1830s is the most
extensive source, but the two synthetic accounts by Robin Middleton and
David Van Zanten, respectively, “Hittorff’s Polychrome Campaign” and
“Architectural Polychromy: Life in Architecture,” both published in The
Beaux-Arts and Nineteenth-Century French Architecture, ed. Robin Middleton
(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1982), 174–195 and 196–215, are very
useful. Middleton also published an excellent account in “Perfezione e colore:
la policromia nell’archittetura francese del XVIII et XIX secolo,” Rassegna 23
(September 1985): 55–67.
30
Jacques-Ignace Hittorff, “Architecture. De l’architecture polychrome chez les
Grecs, ou restitution complète du temple d’Empédocle, dans l’acropole de
Sélinunte,” Annales de l’institut de correspondance archéologique 2 (1830): 263.
31
Hittorff, “Architecture. De l’architecture polychrome chez les Grecs,” 264.
32
Charles-Ernest Beulé, “Éloge de M. Hittorff prononcé dans la séance publique
de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts le 12 décembre 1868,” reprinted in Hittorff, Un
architecte du XIXe siècle, Sylvain Bellenger et al., eds., exh. cat. (Paris: Musée
Carnavalet, 1986), 351.
33
“Lettres d’Italie,” Nachlass Hittorff, Stadarchiv, Cologne; quoted in David Van
Zanten, The Architectural Polychromy of the 1830s, 48–49.
34
Charles-Ernest Beulé, “Éloge de M. Hittorff,” 350.
35
David Van Zanten, The Architectural Polychromy of the 1830s, 9–18.
36
Jean-Nicolas Huyot, BnF, NAF 691, fol. 184; quoted by David Van Zanten in The
Architectural Polychromy of the 1830s, 20.
37
See, for instance, the work of Joëlle Prugnaud, such as Les monuments du
passé: Traces et représentations d’une histoire dans la littérature, Fiona McIntosh-
architecture painted
85
Varjabédian and Joëlle Prugnaud, eds. (Lille: Presses de l’Université Charles-deGaulle-Lille 3, 2008); see also Stephen Bann, “History and the Image: From the
Lyons School to Paul Delaroche,” in François Loyer, ed., L’architecture, les sciences
et la culture de l’histoire au XIXe siècle (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’université
de Saint-Étienne, 2001), 251–264.
38
Gérard de Nerval, “Aurelia,” Oeuvres complètes, 2 vols. (Paris: GarnierFlammarion, 1958), vol. 1, 769.
39
Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre: The History of the Diorama and
the Daguerreotype (New York: Dover, 1968), 41.
40
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1981), 31–32.
41
I am borrowing an expression used by Stephen Bann in Romanticism and the Rise
of History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995), 42.
42
“Les dioramas de M. Daguerre faits pour produire l’illusion, heureuse machine
pour faire arriver le spectateur le plus près possible de la nature, les dioramas,
dis-je, ont-ils eu jamais le quart de la vogue d’un bon tableau à l’exposition,
pourquoi? Parce que le diorama sent la machine, et que l’homme, heureusement,
a horreur de la machine. … Tous les télégraphes de Montmartre, les
lithochromies, les pantographies, cosmographies, diagraphies, myriographies,
n’empêcheront pas que les Marilhat, Giroux, Coignet et tant d’autres feront
toujours mieux le paysage que M. Daguerre,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father
Emmanuel-Louis, Siena, October 14, 1836, LI, 167.
43
I was not able to trace the drawing’s present location, though it was originally
part of the collection of the Duc de Nemours (Prince Louis of Orléans).
44
On the extended meaning of the Renaissance for Romantic architects, see Barry
Bergdoll’s masterful account in Léon Vaudoyer: Historicism in the Age of Industry
(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1994).
45
The long drawn-out discussions about the restoration of the Palais de Justice
came to a head in 1835. For a detailed history, see Katherine Fischer Taylor’s
“The Palais de Justice of Paris: Modernization, Historical Self-Consciousness,
and their Prehistory in French Institutional Architecture (1835–1869),” PhD diss.,
Harvard University, 1989.
46
Taylor, “The Palais de Justice of Paris: Modernization, Historical SelfConsciousness, and their Prehistory in French Institutional Architecture
(1835–1869),” 467–468.
47
See Baron Ferdinand de Guilhermy’s claim to that effect in his La Sainte-Chapelle
de Paris d’après les restaurations (Paris: B. Bance, 1857), unpaged.
48
Unsigned, “Beaux-Arts, Salon de 1835. Architecture,” L’Artiste 9 (1835): 148.
49
Viollet-le-Duc, “Nécrologie. M. Lassus,” EdA 7 (1857): col. 114.
50
Prosper Mérimée, “Salon de 1839,” Revue des Deux Mondes 18 (1839): 88.
51
It is difficult to establish with great precision when Viollet-le-Duc started his
collaboration on the Voyages pittoresques, as considerable confusion exists in the
dating of the various volumes, which were originally published in installments
often spanning many years. Pierre-Marie Auzas claims that Viollet-le-Duc
provided drawings to Baron Taylor only after 1838, in his Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
1814–1879 (Paris: Caisse nationale des monuments historiques, 1979), 36, an
opinion shared by Elisabeth Wolstenhome in “Viollet-le-Duc and Mérimée:
86
architecture and the historical imagination
a Comparative Study of their Theories of Restoration,” master’s thesis,
University of Manchester, 1966, 58–59. Yet the second volume, devoted to the
Auvergne, dated from 1833, already has borders designed by Viollet-le-Duc.
His more substantial contribution begins with the third volume, devoted to
the Languedoc, dated 1835. Whatever the actual date of publication of these
volumes, we have confirmation that Viollet-le-Duc had provided decorative
borders for Baron Taylor prior to his departure for Italy (in 1836) from a passage
in a letter from Emmanuel-Louis Viollet-le-Duc to Viollet-le-Duc during that
trip, May 2, 1837, LI, 298. Given his substantial contribution to a volume dated
1835 (a date that probably reflects the moment when the first installment of
the volume was issued), it is safely assumed that his contribution began in that
period, but it may well have been earlier.
52
See LI, 27, n. 2.
53
See several references to the topic in various family correspondence, LI, 150 and
152 and LVLD, 110 and 336–337.
54
Georges-François Tempier (1777–1857) married Aimée Elisabeth Marguerite
Buron. His shop on 23, Boulevard des Italiens was “À la bonne foi.”
55
“J’écris à Adolphe, mais je suis assez embarrassé sur la forme à donner à cette
lettre. Papa semble m’engager à lui parler franchement de l’espèce de pouvoir
qu’il laisse prendre sur lui par notre aimable famille, mais que lui dirai-je làdessus, la vérité? Il ne la croira pas. Je recevrai encore de mauvais compliments,
et notre excellent gros père ne me soutiendra pas. … Non! Non, je ne me mêle
plus de ces affaires; d’abord parce que mon frère est bien trop empâté, englué,
embobiné par les Chabanais pour que je puisse espérer par ma seule éloquence,
moi qui suis à 700 lieues, le tirer de leurs griffes; … puis on dit toujours que
c’est moi qui mène mon père, qui voudrais mener mon frère et tous eux qui
m’entourent, je suis enfin un petit Napoléon familier et voudrais avoir la
souveraine puissance. Je ne ferai rien, je suis fatigué d’entendre dire par un tas
de niais et de gobe-mouches que tout se fait chez nous par mon désir, cela n’est
ni dans mon caractère ni dans mes goûts; si j’avais l’ambition de dominer, ce
serait m’arrêter bien bas que de vouloir faire le petit roi de si petits esprits, et la
rue Chabanais n’offre pas assez de resources au cœur et à l’esprit pour que je
veuille établir là mon petit état,” Viollet-le-Duc to his wife Elisabeth, Palermo,
April 28, 1836, LI, 54.
56
“Former son talent,” Viollet-le-Duc to his wife Elisabeth, Marseilles, March 19,
1836, LI, 13.
57
“M. Ingres strongly encouraged me to do a piece of work from the remarkable
parts of the Vatican; a great subject he suggested and which would be beautiful,
are the Loggia,” (“M. Ingres m’a fort encouragé à faire un travail sur les portions
remarquables du Vatican; un grand travail dont il m’a parlé et qui serait beau, ce
sont les Loges.”) Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, LI, 237.
58
See Robin Middleton, “Ingres and Viollet-le-Duc, A Roman Encounter ” Gazette
des Beaux-Arts 95 (April 1980): 147–152.
59
Le Voyage d’Italie d’Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1836–1837, 178.
60
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Rome, March 1, 1837, LI, 258.
61
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, August 29, 1836, LI, 129.
62
See, among many passages, Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis,
Palermo, April 25, 1836, LI, 49–50.
architecture painted
87
63
See Middleton, “Ingres and Viollet-le-Duc, A Roman Encounter,” 147–152.
64
Jean-Michel Leniaud noted the influence in Viollet-le-Duc ou les délires du système
(Paris: Menges, 1994) 20. See also the notice on the Subiaco drawing in Le Voyage
d’Italie d’Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1836–1837, 167.
65
See Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Rome, October 31, 1836, LI,
186–188.
66
Bann, “History and the Image: From the Lyons School to Paul Delaroche,”
251–264.
67
Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History, 120.
68
“En voyant [the Greek temples at Agrigento] on ne peut que se désoler en
pensant à ce paradis perdu de l’art,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis,
Agrigento, May 25, 1836, LI, 69.
69
“Comme l’histoire, comme les souvenirs embellissent alors les pierres, et comme
ce qui est d’une beauté simple devient sublime quand on pense à tous les siècles,
à tous les évènements dont ces monuments ont été les témoins inaltérables,”
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Calatafimi, May 14, 1836, LI, 63.
70
“Personne n’a le désir de nous faire de la peine, personne ne passe sa vie,
n’emploie toutes ses ressources à nous tourmenter,” Viollet-le-Duc to his wife
Elisabeth, Palermo, April 28, 1836, LI, 53.
71
“Ah! … Si je n’étais pas subjugué par cette ambition, ce désir de faire quelque
chose qui dépasse la foule, comme nous vivrions bien ici. … Nous serions si
tranquilles,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Palermo, April 22,
1836, LI, 49.
72
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Pau, June 28, 1833, LVLD, 171.
73
See Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Voyage aux Pyrénées: 1833: Lettres à son père et journal
de route, preface Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc (Lourdes: Les amis du Musée
pyrénéen, 1972).
74
Viollet-le-Duc et la montagne, Pierre A. Frey and Lise Grenier, eds. (Grenoble:
Glénat, 1993), 12.
75
We know that David d’Angers visited Friedrich’s studio in 1834; see Marcel
Brion, “Caspar David Friedrich, inventeur du paysage tragique,” in Caspar David
Friedrich. La trace et la transparence, Jacquelin et Maurice Guillaud, eds. (Paris:
Centre culturel du Marais, 1984), 58. Hyppolite Fortoul also discusses Friedrich
in the first volume of his De l’art en Allemagne, 2 vols. (Paris: Labitte, 1841–1842),
vol. 1, 516.
76
See LVLD, passim.
77
“Autour ce n’est que débris, neiges et forêts; des blocs de granit percent au milieu
des sapins, tout cela sent la destruction, les ravages, la mort. C’est horriblement
triste, mais quelles lignes admirables, quelles belles forêts, quelles eaux fraîches
et limpides. … Je me trouve dans mon élément, au milieu de ces grandes et
belles horreurs que j’aime tant,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis,
Pau, June 28, 1833, LVLD, 172, and Gavarnie, July 18, 1833, LVLD, 189.
78
Viollet-le-Duc to his wife Elisabeth, Taormina, June 16, 1836, LI, 85.
79
“Le grand principe divin qui régit toute chose … et sait balancer la fortune et
l’infortune pour le bien général,” Viollet-le-Duc to his wife Elisabeth, Taormina,
June 16, 1836, LI, 85.
88
architecture and the historical imagination
80
“Les hommes n’ont plus aucune puissance, et que de temps à autre cette nature
si grande et si calme se venge cruellement sur les voyageurs en gants blancs
des bêtises qu’ils disent sur elle,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis,
Cauterets, August 2, 1833, LVLD, 208.
81
“Je trouve un calmant très puissant à cette ambition qui, au milieu de cette
société, me tourmente souvent,” Viollet-le-Duc to his wife Elisabeth, Taormina,
June 16, 1836, LI, 86.
82
“Je pensais à cette belle nuit dans ce pays affreux, et aux soirées de Paris
brillantes de lumières et de fleurs où ce qu’il y a de plus laid est recouvert de
vêtements si riches, si doux à l’oeil, tandis qu’ici la nature est brute, seule, livrée
à toutes ses fantaisies sauvages, où ce qu’il y a de plus laid paraît laid, ce qu’il y
a de beau paraît beau,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Bagnèresde-Bigorre, August 19, 1833, LVLD, 232.
83
“Partout, éboulements de rochers nus, sentiers impraticables, horizon à perte
de vue de grandes lignes de montagnes bleues qui se coupent et se croisent;
au premier plan, entre deux escarpements, la mer apparaît comme une vapeur
qui se fond avec le ciel. … En contemplant ce pays si grand, si triste, où le vent
seul se fait entendre, on est tenté de se croire en Palestine,” Viollet-le-Duc to his
father Emmanuel-Louis, Rome, May 11, 1837, LI, 294–295.
84
“Des physiognomies sauvages, dures, des yeux admirablement fendus, un nez
busqué, une bouche arquée et toujours entr’ouverte comme pour sourire de
dédain, une peau unie et jaune, les yeux brillants; leur corset est brodé de galons
d’or ou de couleur, leur jupe bleue est à plis nombreux, et un châle noué autour
des reins pend par derrière; … le coup d’oeil était unique … quelque chose de
primitif qui émouvait profondément,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father EmmanuelLouis, Rome, May 11, 1837, LI, 294–295.
85
French painters, among many others, who visited La Cervara include Camille
Corot, Théodore Aligny, Ernest Hébert, Édouard Bertin, and Paul Delaroche.
See the notice on Bertin, who exhibited in the Salon of 1839 a well-received
View of the quarries of La Cervara, in Les années romantiques. La peinture française
de 1815 à 1850, exh. cat., Isabelle Julia and Jean Lacambre, eds. (Paris: Éditions
de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1995) 331. See also Stephen Bann, Paul
Delaroche: History Painted (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 243.
86
Étienne Delécluze to Viollet-le-Duc in Rome, January 10, 1837, LI, 226.
87
Viollet-le-Duc to his wife Elisabeth, June 5, 1836, LI, 77.
88
“Il n’y a pas de sensations plus vives et plus profondes que celles que l’on
éprouve en se trouvant au milieu de tous ces vénérables débris. Peu à peu
l’imagination restaure des énormes murailles d’un seul morceau, … [et] bientôt
on peuple tout cela,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis Agrigento,
May 25, 1836, LI, 70.
89
On Granet’s views of the Colosseum, see Denis Coutagne, “Le paysage de
Rome,” in Isabelle Néto Daguerre and Denis Coutagne, Granet, peintre de Rome
(Aix-en-Provence: Associations des Amis du Musée Granet, 1992), 238–250.
90
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Rome, January 17, 1837, LI, 235.
91
“Je vais au Colisée, … je suis éreinté; je m’assieds, et après bien des efforts pour
comprendre certains problèmes de construction, l’imagination l’emporte. Je vois
le Colisée avec son immense mer de gradins couverts de la foule romaine; …je
vois le voile pourpre étendu sur cette foule dont le murmure ressemble à celui
architecture painted
89
de la mer éloignée; puis ce murmure se change en cris de joie, en cris sauvages,
et cette arène aujourd’hui calme, silencieuse, je la vois teinte de sang. Mais la
grande croix rouge plantée au milieu me rappelle à la réalité; je jette les yeux
autour de moi, et au lieu de gradins encombrés de monde il n’y a que ruines
informes, voûtes creusées, arbrisseaux verts, poussière et vétusté,” Viollet-leDuc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Rome, November 4, 1836, LI, 187.
92
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Rome, November 4, 1836, LI, 187.
93
“Pourquoi l’imagination est-elle sans cesse au-dessus de l’impression ressentie?”
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Genève, August 26, 1837, LI, 339.
94
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Rome, January 17, 1837, LI, 235.
95
“Le gouffre … a cet attrait si puissant pour l’imagination, tant parce que ce
lieu est bien différent de tout ce que l’on voit ordinairement que parce qu’il
est vraiment beau et au-dessus de ce qu’on peut se figurer. Ses grandes et
longues crevasses fumantes, ses pointes hardies et déchiquetées ne me sortent
pas de la mémoire, non plus que sa profondeur effrayante d’où mille bruits
confus s’échappent et forment une mélodie sinistre et sauvage, non plus que les
vives couleurs impossible à rendre, et cette odeur qui par bouffées vient vous
suffoquer,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Taormina, June 16,
1836, LI, 84.
96
See Le Voyage d’Italie d’Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1836–1837, 78.
97
The furies provoked, in Viollet-le-Duc’s own words, “Greek women to go into
labor, they were so terrified (des femmes grecques qui accouchaient de peur
à l’arrivée des Euménides),” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis,
Livorno, August 10, 1836, LI, 117.
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Part II
The Gothic Reborn
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3
History Re-enacted
Return to the Gothic
Viollet-le-Duc had hoped his Italian journey would be initiatory, a
“baptism,” as he called it,1 but as it turned out, the trip led to no special
revelation. In fact, it only exacerbated his feeling of indecision. While
in Italy, he showed contempt toward the pensionnaires at the Académie
de France, and bitterly criticized the “stifling” mentorship of his uncle
Delécluze2; but he also mocked the more progressive Romantic faction,
which he reduced to yet another passing fashion.3 As the trip progressed,
his criticism increased in sharpness. The late letters to his father indicate
a state of great confusion. His humiliation at the snooty remarks about
his drawings by the pensionnaires was probably a turning point.4 After
that rebuke he spoke of “the general shipwreck of his opinions.”5 When
traveling through the Alps back toward Paris in August 1837 with his wife
and brother, an exhausted Viollet-le-Duc realized to his own dismay that
even the mountains, the only spectacle that in the past truly satisfied him,
no longer struck a chord. “Why continue my route, since at every step I
lose a pleasure, an impression, a happiness?” he then asked. “Why was I
created, since after a life spent sowing and gathering, I find myself emptyhanded, the soul naked and dry?”6
This somewhat melodramatic statement can be put down in part to
fatigue, but it also reflected a basic irresolution. Italy had not revealed any
new path. Viollet-le-Duc’s interest in architectural polychromy was genuine,
but by 1837, it was already somewhat passé as a topic, and for the time being
he saw no new way to approach it. Moreover, his focus on color forced him
away from his beloved French Gothic, an architecture he then believed to be
deprived of the rich layer he had so much admired in Italian monuments.7
Comparing Greek to Gothic, Viollet-le-Duc described the latter as “sad,
mystical, meditative.”8 At one point in his journey, he even dismissed the
Gothic as mere “child’s play.”9 Yet turning to the canonical works of the
Italian Renaissance could hardly invigorate his artistic impulse. He would
be settling into the rut of the Percier and Delécluze school, where he received
94
architecture and the historical imagination
his early training. Any ambitious artist living in the 1830s knew all too well
that to distinguish oneself it was necessary to free oneself from the yoke of
academia.
The Middle Ages would not remain on Viollet-le-Duc’s black list very
long. In the preface to the Dictionnaire raisonné, he claimed that it was upon
his return from Italy that the unity, harmony, and science of medieval
French architecture impressed him most.10 His passion for the Gothic indeed
progressively returned after 1837. Yet if we consider the work produced
during the short period between the Italian sojourn and the Vézelay
commission, we are struck not by its unity, harmony, or science, but by its
disparate, decorative, and even fantasist character. Immediately upon his
return, Viollet-le-Duc set to work on other decorative bronze objects for
King Louis-Philippe, designed in the most unabashedly grand siècle manner,
though it must be noted that he expressed reluctance to do that type of
work, which he claimed would mar his reputation.11 He also continued to
exploit his status as a painter at the court, contributing two watercolors to an
album offered to King Louis-Philippe commemorating the marriage of Duke
Ferdinand-Philippe d’Orléans, complete with a binding of his own design.12
The same year, Viollet-le-Duc compiled a lavish album of 21 watercolors
of Sicily for Queen Amélie, mostly copies of a selection of his own Sicilian
drawings, dramatized and theatricalized.13
Most significant and probably most lucrative, was the fact that he resumed
the production of decorative borders for Baron Taylor, creating no less than
60 drawings in 1838 and a total of 221 by 1845. The invention that went into
these astonishing specimens of the current medievalizing mania is striking,
giving them a special quality that Baron Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor
recognized.14 These ornamental exercises testify in great measure to Violletle-Duc’s unrestrained love for decoration, a type of work he considered “truly
artistic,”15 and likewise the nature of his relationship with the Middle Ages,
a world he believed to have been bursting with vitality. What distinguished
his decorative borders from those of others was not only the inventive nature
of the compositions, but also the choice of subject: tournaments and jousts,
street theatre, carnivals, sacrificial rites, sieges, massacres, public executions,
and duels—druidic, Celtic or historicizing medieval scenes (Fig. 3.1). The
vivid and often ferocious nature of the action represented, unrelated to
the text it accompanied, created a strange distraction, with the decorative
borders literally leaping off the page as a medley of armor, mutilated bodies,
and fairies. Through such drawings, we understand the extent to which
Viollet-le-Duc’s Middle Ages was founded on fantasy, and how much he
had absorbed some of the Romantic imagery associated with the period.
One of his last borders, printed in the third volume of the Picardie series
of 1845, depicts a maelstrom of fairies, devils, and monsters summoned
by an operation of witchcraft involving the manipulation of animals (Fig.
3.2). The intriguing image is comically caricatural, yet it is also a wonderful
example on the transgressive potential of the decorative grotesque. Viollet-
3.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Untitled decorative border. From Baron Taylor,
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques en ancienne France, Picardie, vol. 1,
1835. Lithograph by Thierry Frères. Private collection
3.2 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Untitled decorative border. From Baron Taylor,
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques en ancienne France, Picardie, vol. 3,
1845. Lithograph by Thierry Frères. Private collection
history re-enacted
97
le-Duc entertained himself with medieval superstitions, even on occasion
faking miracles to abuse the gullible while on his touring missions. Robin
Middleton found the following story recorded on a loose sheet in Violletle-Duc’s personal archives, a “contrived comic incident” that probably
occurred around 1850 when he had been won over by Prosper Mérimée’s
skeptical sense of humour: “Staying with a friend, [Paul] Tournal, a chemist
and amateur archaeologist, at Narbonne,” as Middleton recounted,
[Viollet-le-Duc] one day drew a portrait of [the veil of] Saint Veronica on an egg,
covered the portrait with grease and dipped the egg into acid. The portrait was thus
given a slight relief. The egg was placed in a pious neighbour’s hen house where it
was found and acclaimed as an object of miracle. It burst, stinking and rotten, a few
days after, during a service, to Viollet-le-Duc’s great delight.16
It was a grotesque and comic play on the medieval legend of Christ’s “true
image” having been imprinted on the veil of Saint Veronica, commonly
called the Veronica, or vera icon. Viollet-le-Duc re-enacted the apocryphal
story by “imprinting” the image on a rotting egg. However disrespectful
he had become in terms of religious belief, he revelled in the world of
superstition as an endless source of fantasies. The medieval grotesque,
so central and successful a part of his restoration practice, symbolized for
him a creative force, a life impulse through which the comic could merge
with the monstrous. Such exuberance, sometimes verging on chaos, would
remain an essential vector running through Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration
work, just as the tendency toward flamboyance runs throughout his career
(Fig. 3.3). He enjoyed and had a remarkable talent for caricature, a type of
drawing he would later use to exemplify his theory of style (Fig. 3.4). But
his decorative work remains the most evident and consistent expression
of his vigorous manner. There are many remarkable examples (Fig. 3.5),
but none match the hundreds of gargoyles he designed for the cathedrals
of France, excrescences that imparted to stone the plasticity of flesh. As
Michael Camille recently observed, their wide-open mouths and gaping
jaws aligned on the façades of cathedrals produce the uncanny impression
that the whole building is screaming (see Fig. 10.2).17
3.3 Comparison
of the pinnacles
of the southern
transept of
Notre-Dame in
Paris, before and
after Viollet-leDuc’s restoration.
From Achille
Carlier, “Le
travestissement
de Notre-Dame
par Viollet-leDuc,” in Les
Pierres de France,
n. 2, March,
April, May 1937.
Private collection
3.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Various caricatures. 1852. Pen and ink. 27.5 × 36.7 cm. Bibliothèque
de l’INHA, Collections Jacques Doucet, Paris. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
3.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Aubusson carpet of a design copied from a motif in
the chapel of the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. Undated. Flat-woven wool.
600.0 × 459.0 cm. Private collection. Courtesy Carlton Hobbs LLC
history re-enacted
99
The Question of Vézelay
In 1838, Viollet-le-Duc was given his first official government architectural
appointments: as Auditeur on the Conseil des bâtiments civils (replacing
his friend Prosper Morey)18 and Sous-inspecteur of works for the Hôtel des
Archives. His first architectural commission came a year later, and betrays
the same delight for the fantasist as his decorative work. Asked to draft a
project for the completion of the Cathedral of Saints Justus and Pastor at
Narbonne in August 1839,19 he submitted a scheme surprisingly florid, with
complex ornamental latticework surrounding rose windows at both ends of
the newly enclosed transept. The motif was inspired by the Basilica of SaintNazaire at Carcassonne, but considerably more intricate. Elisabeth Williams,
who analyzed the project, noted “the crushing density of decorative elements
… opposed to the austerity of the [original] monument.” It was “an exercice de
style,” she concludes.20 It seems indeed an attempt to use the display of lateGothic trappings to excite the viewer, a gesture not unusual in the early phase
of the Gothic revival in France, typified by the design of the façade for the
Church of Saint Ouen in Rouen by architect Henri Grégoire.21 Judging from
the drawings brought back from his multiple trips to Normandy, Viollet-leDuc indeed had a predilection for the late Gothic.
He eventually submitted to the Commission des monuments historiques
a revised, more reasonable project for Narbonne, which was provisionally
approved in February 1840, even if the Commission’s president Jean Vatout
still felt it necessary to note numerous “défauts de style.”22 The project was,
however, convincing enough for Viollet-le-Duc to be adopted as Architecte
attaché à la Commission and to be appointed at the same time to carry out the
restoration of the Romanesque Abbey Church of La Madeleine at Vézelay,
the legendary project that launched his career as a restoration architect and
eventually led him to his structural interpretation of the Gothic. Mere months
after having been sent to Vézelay, Viollet-le-Duc was also named Sousinspecteur on the restoration team for Sainte-Chapelle, thereby joining Félix
Duban and Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus on this project which would prove
crucial for him and for the restoration movement as a whole.
Much ink has been spilled to explain how such an important and
challenging project as Vézelay could have been placed in the hands of a
relatively inexperienced young man of 26 (Fig. 3.6).23 Family and personal
ties with members of the Commission have been pointed out by Jean-Michel
Leniaud and others. The choice of Viollet-le-Duc had indeed been made by the
Inspecteur général des monuments historiques, Prosper Mérimée, whose brilliant
literary career was launched in the salon of Viollet-le-Duc père in the mid-1820s.
Soon to become Viollet-le-Duc’s closest ally and lifelong friend, Mérimée
also played a crucial role throughout his career. But the fact of Mérimée’s
role should be seen in the context of the many other family connections that
Viollet-le-Duc enjoyed. He was probably the most well connected young
architect of the period. The list of names goes on and on: Ludovic Vitet, Baron
100 architecture and the historical imagination
3.6 Portrait of
Viollet-le-Duc.
Daguerreotype.
1840. © Philippe
Berthé—Centre
des monuments
nationaux
Taylor, Charles Lenormant, Charles Magnin,
Jean Vatout, Louis Visconti, Jean-JacquesMarie Huvé, Charles Percier, Pierre Fontaine,
and even King Louis-Philippe himself. It is
not a matter of one man’s pulling of strings;
Viollet-le-Duc was located at the centre of the
entire artistic and literary milieu of the July
Monarchy.
In addition to his innumerable family
connections, one must not forget that by this
time he already had a significant record of
involvement in medieval studies. In addition
to the Narbonne project are his many
meticulous drawings of Chartres, his recurrent
travels to Normandy, where he met Arcisse de
Caumont, France’s most prominent medieval
archaeologist,24 and his various projects for
Baron Taylor. He also flirted with Gothic
revivalist circles from 1837, having befriended
the archaeologist Alphonse-Napoléon Didron
and Lassus. The Directeur des Beaux-Arts HyginAuguste Cavé, who officially recommended
Viollet-le-Duc to the Ministre de l’Intérieur,
may thus have been sincere when he described Viollet-le-Duc as “an artist
whose special studies ensure the successful execution of the work.”25 The
studies in question were more pictorial than technical, but Viollet-le-Duc’s
reputation as a draftsman had indeed been a decisive factor. Gothic buildings
were not easy to draw, and the Commission often complained about the
poor quality of drawings submitted by its regional correspondents.26 Auguste
Nicolas Caristie, an architect who was a member of both the Commission des
monuments historiques and the Conseil des bâtiments civils, rightly identified
the nature of Viollet-le-Duc’s talent, noting (with reference to the Narbonne
project) “the scrupulous care he took in reproducing exactly the form and the
details that he needed to bring back to life and restore.”27 Mérimée himself,
who ultimately made the decision, later confirmed that the Commission des
monuments historiques had first come “to notice the drawings of M. Violletle-Duc.”28
However intriguing the choice of Viollet-le-Duc for the restoration of
Vézelay may be, the more significant question is why or how the project
provided such a turning point in his own development. The restoration of
Vézelay, as has been so often repeated, was not only an exercise requiring
good design judgment, it was above all a dicey problem of structural stability.
Just how fragile the dilapidated Abbey Church of La Madeleine really
was is difficult to ascertain precisely, but without question it involved the
delicate task of consolidating seriously deteriorated stonework. A vault in
history re-enacted 101
the narthex would collapse during the early years of Viollet-le-Duc’s tenure.
And according to Francis Salet, the accident would have been fatal for the
whole church had Viollet-le-Duc not already rebuilt the three most damaged
arcades of the main nave. There, the voussoirs of the ribs, according to Violletle-Duc himself, simply crumbled into dust in the hands of the mason.29 Only
four bays in front of the transept were saved in their original state; the other
six were entirely rebuilt by Viollet-le-Duc. There is a general consensus in
the vast literature on Viollet-le-Duc’s restorations that despite his excess in
restoring Vézelay, he showed remarkable acumen and efficiency in dealing
with the dilapidated structure itself.
Nothing in Viollet-le-Duc’s previous work indicated any special
knowledge or interest in the field of construction. True, he started his
architectural apprenticeship early, at age 16, spending first a brief period
in the office of Huvé, a close friend of the Viollet-le-Ducs who lived next
door to the family on rue Chabanais, and then a few years working under
Achille Leclère. But he apparently showed only a distracted interest in
practical questions, lured as he was by more Romantic aspirations. His
appointments as Auditeur on the Conseil des bâtiments civils and Sousinspecteur of works for the Hôtel des Archives certainly introduced him
to the complexities of managing building sites, but they are unlikely to
have provided any decisive knowledge of construction, let alone Gothic
structures. Given the importance of that element for his future work, it
may be worth reviewing briefly his attitude toward construction prior to
Vézelay.
Judging from his voluminous Italian correspondence, Viollet-le-Duc
did appreciate the value of construction, but mostly in relation to ancient
and Renaissance architecture, and exclusively in visual terms. Classical
construction had a “simplicité et hardiesse,”30 which he greatly admired, while
he dismissed medieval French construction as labored and intricate.31 His
thoughts on the subject were quite academic, reflecting the influence of his
Neoclassical mentors. He admired, for instance, Pierre Fontaine’s Tuileries
staircase for the “grande manière” of its construction, an appreciation that,
incidentally, seemed to have greatly touched the old Fontaine.32 Structural
questions, however, were never broached. His assessments were confined
to broad compositional effects. There is not a single structural drawing
among the hundreds brought back from Italy. And he abandoned midway
his study of the construction of the ancient Roman Cloaca Maxima and
aqueducts, a topic suggested to him by Fontaine, who had a fascination
for these early Roman public works. Viollet-le-Duc pronounced the work a
mere “affaire des ponts et chaussées.”33 He occasionally expressed in passing
an interest in construction, but it was never sustained. He criticized the new
attention given to the matter in Romantic architectural circles, mocking the
“fashionable” artists who call themselves “constructeurs,” and who sneered
at the decorative.34 Toward the end of his journey, he declared that “too
much science prevents making something good.”35
102 architecture and the historical imagination
So why did Viollet-le-Duc so immediately rise to the practical challenge
of Vézelay, demonstrating a “crânerie magnifique,” as Lenormant put it?36
The first explanation that comes to mind is indeed of a psychological order:
Viollet-le-Duc simply had an irresistible drive to succeed, an overriding
desire for mastery. Mérimée would later relate to Charles-Augustin SainteBeuve that when he asked Delécluze in 1840 about Viollet-le-Duc’s ability
to carry out the work at Vézelay, Delécluze simply answered: “If Eugène
decides to take on the project, do not worry, he will succeed.”37 Challenge was
and always remained the most effective spark to fire Viollet-le-Duc’s energy
and talent. He loved nothing better than to resolve problems. Moreover,
Vézelay came up at a particularly sensitive juncture in his career. At 26, he felt
that it was urgent to make his mark, and he had just suffered two setbacks:
the lukewarm reception of his Narbonne project, and the dismissal of his
ambitious Taormina restoration as “merely” painterly by Daly in the newly
launched Revue générale de l’architecture et des travaux publics. For someone as
ambitious and sensitive as Viollet-le-Duc, these two rebukes must not have
gone down easily, especially since they were aimed at two cherished works:
the restoration of a Gothic monument and the culminating product of his
Italian journey. Vézelay provided a good opportunity to respond to both.
Construction problems being so immediate, the “stylistic issues” (a term used
by Vatout in his criticism of Narbonne) could be relegated to a secondary
position, eventually becoming a consequence of a larger building logic.
And the practical challenge was the perfect platform for disproving Daly’s
accusations that he was “merely” a painter.
The urge to respond to criticism, however, offers only a partial explanation.
Two key influences drawn from debates in the field at the time are frequently
invoked to account for Viollet-le-Duc’s new enthusiasm for construction
in the 1840s: first, the diffusion of Saint-Simonian ideas on architecture, in
which structure was a prominent determinant, particularly Léonce Reynaud’s
articles on architecture in the Encyclopédie nouvelle;38 second, Viollet-le-Duc’s
introduction to the rationalist ideas of Henri Labrouste through his contact
with Lassus at Saint-Chapelle. The latter influence is particularly convincing
since Lassus was a close friend of Viollet-le-Duc’s from 1837, becoming his
closest associate up to the time of his death in 1857. Both a devoted student
of Labrouste and an enthusiastic medievalist, Lassus was indeed a crucial
intermediary who would have offered a version of the rationalist teaching of
his mentor aimed at providing insights into Gothic architecture. We know,
moreover, that Viollet-le-Duc had fond memories of his experience at SaintChapelle, a rare instance, as we will see, of the fusion of all his interests.
It should be added that Viollet-le-Duc met Labrouste himself in 1843,
collaborating with him on the estimation of the works at the Hôtel de Cluny.
No doubt these influences are part of the larger context that nourished
Viollet-le-Duc’s ideas on architecture, but they should not overshadow
his own maturation process. Working on Vézelay, he was confronted with
difficult construction problems in the context of a restoration conducted
history re-enacted 103
far from Paris, and which, at least at the beginning, would appear to have
had very little relevance to current architectural debates. In contrast to the
restorations of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois and Sainte-Chapelle, Vézelay
was not carried out in the limelight, with only Mérimée and members of
the Commission des monuments historiques following the evolution of the
project. Viollet-le-Duc was entirely focused on the problem of nursing an
almost fatally ailing building. Because the issue of restoring the past had
preoccupied him since at least 1832, the most relevant questions are: how did
his involvement with historical monuments evolve once he was put in charge
of an actual restoration project, sponsored, moreover, by the Commission
des monuments historiques? How did the admixture of stern practicality
transform his affective relation to monuments? It is in trying to answer these
questions that one begins to understand what motivated the shift in Viollet-leDuc’s career, and to gain new insight into the interest that construction held
for architects in Romantic circles of the time.
Restoration and the Referential Illusion
To follow Viollet-le-Duc’s development in the early 1840s, one needs to
understand the conceptual issues and tensions that underlay restoration
work of the period. To that end, let’s review as succinctly as possible the
question as it developed in the second quarter of the nineteenth century
in France, and risk a few generalizations on a rather complex topic. It may
seem obvious today, but the forceful campaign to safeguard the nation’s
great monuments (led in the 1820s by Victor Hugo, Charles Nodier, Baron
Taylor, and Comte Charles de Montalembert) was largely stimulated by the
new importance bestowed upon a monument’s historical value, often at the
expense of its actual use. Tensions arose between the clergy, who owned and
used the majority of these “national” monuments and worried more about
their practical and liturgical issues than their historical worth, and the circle
of Romantic intellectuals who sat on the various government commissions
set up to oversee restorations. Montalembert, an important liberal Catholic
political figure whose advocacy of preservation was motivated by both
historical and religious interests, complained as much about the clergy’s lack
of historical sensibility as the relative indifference to religion on the part of
many of the medievalists gathered around the Commission des monuments
historiques.39 The opposition between the Romantics and the clergy was
not easily reconciled, being the expression of the gulf that separates the
sacred from the profane. The group who stood on the “sacred” side of the
divide, however, was not the clergy, but rather the Romantics, who upheld
the bourgeois myth of a national history with its concomitant sanctification
of art. Montalembert himself, who had a complex intellectual trajectory,
having been subjected to the successive influences of Victor Cousin, Friedrich
Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Hugues-Felicité-Robert de Lamennais, was
104 architecture and the historical imagination
certainly no orthodox Catholic. Even if he distanced himself from Lamennais
after the latter broke with the Church, his thoughts were still tinged with a
Romanticism that sat uneasily with Catholic dogma.
Such tensions may help explain why the official policies of the Restoration,
the very name of which would seem to indicate a keen interest in preservation,
were relatively unconcerned about archaeological correctness in the campaign
to repair France’s old ecclesiastical monuments. The Restoration’s connection
to the past was dynastic, tied to the values of the ancien régime and not to the
bourgeois and more abstract notion of a “national” history. To be sure, the
Middle Ages became very fashionable among the elite, with Troubadour-style
interiors and medieval costume balls proliferating in the capital and at the
Tuileries Palace. It is not always easy to distinguish the historic sensibility
associated with the ancien régime from a more radical Romanticism, one so
often bleeding into the other. In architectural terms, however, the officials of
the régime resisted the liberal, Romantic, and ultimately rebellious tendencies
associated with the rise of interest in the medieval past. Antoine-Chrysostome
Quatremère de Quincy, who played an important role in setting architectural
policy during the Restoration, made sure that Alexandre-Marie Lenoir’s
Musée des monuments français, the symbolic fountainhead of France’s
preservation movement and a key site for the emergence of a Romantic
sensibility, was dismantled in the early years of the Restoration. Quatremère
de Quincy’s chief aim was to return to their original site the fragments that
had been torn from them during the Revolution. But his actions also reflected
a desire to suppress a new sensibility antithetical to academic architecture.
During the Restoration, the architects who carried out the restoration of
medieval monuments, usually the trio of academic architects AntoineMarie Peyre, Étienne Godde, and François Debret, were more interested in
celebrating the monarchic heritage than the history of France as rewritten by
liberal historians.40
Not surprisingly, it is only with the advent of the bourgeois government
of the July Monarchy that the great patrimonial institutions of France were
founded on the initiative of François Guizot, an aspect of Louis-Philippe’s
regime much studied recently, particularly by French architectural historian
Jean-Michel Leniaud.41 Immediately following his appointment as Ministre
de l’Intérieur, Guizot created the position of Inspecteur général des monuments
historiques. The position, first held by Ludovic Vitet but soon taken over
by Mérimée, was dedicated to the survey of the architectural heritage. The
Inspecteur général compared and classified the various monuments of France in
order to judge their historical importance and artistic merit, identified urgent
preservation problems, and suggested immediate conservation measures. In
1835, the Comité des arts et monuments was instituted as a learned society
to further promote an inventory of monuments and to establish criteria for
scientific archaeology and restoration. Two years later, the Commission des
monuments historiques was founded to help the Inspecteur général allocate the
funds for an increasingly elaborate restoration program. The latter was the
history re-enacted 105
body that directed most government restoration works, though the approval
of the Conseil des bâtiments civils was required until 1848. The Commission,
just like the Comité des arts et monuments, was dominated by figures with
Romantic leanings such as Baron Taylor, Mérimée, Vitet, Lenormant, and
Duban. Apart from having to apply constant pressure on the government to
secure adequate funding and to fight a recriminating clergy (who typically
dealt with the Ministère de la Justice et des Cultes), the Commission waged
its crusade to safeguard the monuments of France against the old method of
restoration, oblivious to “scientific” developments in medieval archaeology,
but still in favor with the Conseil des bâtiments civils. In its total concentration
on historical value, the Commission des monuments historiques was not
merely a regulating administrative body. It became the institutional basis for
a new form of architectural practice, training a different breed of architectearchéologue.
If we examine the conceptual issues underlying the efforts of the
Commission, we find a basic tension between empirical fact and imaginative
invention. César Daly underscored the “incommensurable distance between
the precision of [historical] documents on which artists base their restoration
and that of the drawings required to be submitted to the [craftsman making
the restoration].”42 A leap inevitably had to be made from the remaining
fragments to the new work. One recommendation thus recurs in the minutes
of the Commission’s meetings: interventions should limit themselves to
acts of “conservation,” which circumvented the thorny issue of having to
“guess” a monument’s original appearance. As the archaeologist Charles
Lenormant put it, “the imagination in matters of restoration can only lead to
disastrous results.”43 But such a call for caution was repeated only because
there existed a rampant desire for extensive restorations. Lenormant’s
warning, for instance, was voiced as part of a debate in June 1840 over the
restoration of the medieval Abbey of Saint-Pierre at Moissac by the architect
Charles-Auguste Questel. The issue was whether the vault, a faulty “modern
addition” that “alters [dénature] its original character,” should be repaired or
replaced by an entirely new carpentry roof “in keeping with the style of the
period.”44 Despite Lenormant’s pointing out that replacing the roof amounted
to guesswork, and that it would set a bad precedent in the region, the
Commission opted to do it, and the decision was defended by Baron Taylor.
The desire to restore was paramount. In this regard, it is very telling that the
Commission favored allocating generous funds to completely restore a few
“remarkable” monuments rather than using the money to merely consolidate
a greater number of buildings.45 This policy was consciously articulated in the
very first meeting, and the extensive work at Vézelay, carried out between
1840 and 1859 and spearheaded by Mérimée, was to be its first application, the
Commission’s “acte de baptème,” as Paul Léon aptly labeled it.46
The strategy was not without contradiction. As the distinguished medieval
archaeologist Baron Ferdinand de Guilhermy warned, only when “a
monument is kept intact” can it stand as “an eyewitness [témoin oculaire] to the
106 architecture and the historical imagination
past.”47 But the desire for ocular penetration was precisely what moved lovers
of history to strong acts of restoration. Historical monuments were privileged
conduits through which to “see” the past. As no historical monument was
ever “intact,” because it always bore a complex stratigraphy of degradations
and alterations, and more fundamentally, because the past is simply past, to
“see” history always required some heightening filter. The Romantic “desire
for history,” to use Stephen Bann’s apt expression,48 was a paradoxical urge:
an appetite for the real (for what actually happened) and at the same time
for the imaginary (for what was no longer). Among the many factors that
may have drawn Romantics to the past, the most compelling, at least at a
philosophical level, was probably that the past was the domain most apt to
give the illusion of a reconciliation between the ideal and the real. Already in
1815, Quatremère de Quincy, in the opening pages of Le Jupiter olympien, gave
a marvelous description of how the attraction to the “real” in archaeological
inquiry was only a first stage in setting up a field for the expansion of the
imagination: “This immense void, which time and destruction have left
between ourselves and the ancients, gives us hope of still new discoveries,
and gives us back the illusion of the infinite that our soul strives for. Therein
lies the reason for this ambition always excited and never satisfied, for this
desire, this lust.”49 He goes on: “when we reach regions [of history] where a
thick cloak of darkness robs us of the sight of objects, we still prefer to resort
to fictions or ghosts than to leave them deserted.”50
We shouldn’t conclude, however, that Lenormant’s call for restraint was
made in bad faith. Beyond pointing to the existence of competing positions
within the Commission, an institution too often described as monolithic, his
appeal betrayed an anxiety about loss shared by everyone. Significantly, the
same men could quickly shift from extreme caution to great permissiveness.
Didron, for example, a most zealous apostle of preservation who did not sit
on the Commission itself but on the Comité des arts et monuments, declared
himself “against restorations of whatever type” in an article on Saint-Germainl’Auxerrois published in the Revue française in 1839.51 Yet a few paragraphs
later, he changed his tune: “[Architects] must humiliate their genius in order
to estimate ancient forms; … one must precisely trace [il faut calquer], restoring
everything to its former state.”52 We could read Didron’s call for humility as a
simple reminder that the restorer must maintain a scientific distance. But his
impassioned tone points to a more curious effort at self-denial. In his famous
“Guerre aux démolisseurs” of 1832, Victor Hugo had already called for such
“fusion [of the restorer’s] genius with the genius of the ancient architect.”53
But it is Lassus, Didron’s ally in the battle for preservation and Viollet-leDuc’s closest associate after 1840, who laid out the case for self-restraint most
emphatically in 1845:
When an architect is put in charge of the restoration of a monument, he must
perform as a scientist. … The artist must entirely disappear, forgetting his tastes, his
preferences, his instincts. … It is with pious respect that he must inquire about the
form, the material, and even the means of execution employed in the past; because
history re-enacted 107
exactness and historical truth are as important for the construction as for the material
and the form. In a restoration, the first concern of the artist must be to make his work
forgotten, all his efforts tending toward the elimination of any traces of his passage
upon the monument. As we see, it is simply science, it is uniquely archaeology.54
Didron and Lassus were laboring under what, in connection to historical
writing, Roland Barthes will later call the “referential illusion”: annulling
his “emotive” self, the architecte-historien is to become a “neutral” channel for
history to narrate itself.55 Barthes quotes Adolphe Thiers’ recommendation to
historians as a particularly candid expression of the illusion: “To be simply
true, to be what things are and nothing more than that, nothing but that.”56
Didron and Lassus’s demand that the restorer “religiously” eliminate “any
traces of his passage,” in order to restore “everything to its former state”
seems an equally clear instance of this illusion.
By bringing out the illusory aspect of the historical quest, I do not wish
to deny the rigor and conscientiousness of the archaeological effort. On the
contrary, the scrupulous labor of recovery is what generates the referential
illusion. The development of new scientific methods in historical inquiry
was precisely what Barthes singled out as the key symptom of a generalized
taste in European culture for a reality free of any representational filter, an
“effet de réel” generated in literature by subtle additions that sought to erase
the status of the text as representation. The whole preservation movement
in France can be encompassed within this comment. When Mérimée wrote
that “to ban the use of the imagination is the first duty of the archaeologist”
and that “divination must be replaced by scientific analysis,”57 he was
entirely motivated by the prestige of the “this happened.” Barthes pointed to
historical monuments as playing the role of secular relics whose only sacred
function was to index the enigma of what has been and is no more.58 The
new importance of the precise delineation of historical objects in painting
or historical novels is a direct reflection of such new status. From this point
of view, the incantatory warnings against “restorations of whatever type”
in the meetings of the Commission des monuments historiques, rather than
contradicting the subsequent development of complete restoration programs,
could be described as their necessary corollary. It prepares the self-immolation
of the architect, at last authorized as a newly displaced self to resuscitate the
past, renunciation being the preparatory stage toward the fantastic leap of
translation.
The energy deployed from the late 1830s to establish a “true” historical
image of the monuments to be restored only serves to confirm the insights of
Barthes and Bann. The new scrupulousness in evaluating historical evidence
emerges simultaneously with new creative techniques intended to mask the
intervention of the architecte-archéologue upon the monument. Before starting
any actual restoration work, monastic and church archives were painstakingly
mined. Lassus, who led the way in this new type of scientific restoration,
was well known for his obsessive research, collecting every scrap of visual
or written historical documentation that would afford an understanding of
108 architecture and the historical imagination
the monument “as it had been.”59 Meticulous drawings of every part of the
monument were being executed, as well as castings, stampings, and quite
early, daguerreotypes, to produce the most faithful record of the changes
made to the building, forcing the restorer to be most punctilious. Violletle-Duc’s famous article “Restauration” in the Dictionnaire raisonné, though
written much later in his career, puts special emphasis on such preliminary
groundwork:
Before beginning [a restoration] it will be necessary to search for and examine all
that remains; to collect the smallest fragments—taking care to note the point where
they were found. … It is necessary to examine the beds, joints, and dressing of the
fragments collected in the clearing. … The slightest indications, even the way in
which these fragments have behaved in falling.60
Since the goal was “the elimination of any traces of [the restorer’s] passage
upon the monument,”61 very special techniques were devised to insure
seamlessness. For the restoration of Saint-Chapelle carried out by Duban
together with Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc, it was reported by Didron in
L’Univers that new stones were meticulously selected not only to match the
type of the old, but also the very appearance of its grain.62 As a perfect match
often proved impossible, artificial (chemical) processes were devised to
compensate.63 Other types of scientific analyses were undertaken to recover,
for instance, the chemical composition of original colors for painted and
stained-glass decoration. For Saint-Chapelle, a commission of quite some
size was set up, under the direction of Michel-Eugène Chevreul, no less, and
including the scientist Alexandre Brongniart and the painter Paul Delaroche
among its many members, to ensure the faithfulness of the restoration of the
stained-glass windows, obviously a crucial element in this case. The result
was so successful that even a very well informed visitor to the chapel could
not (and still cannot) detect where the true medieval stained glass ends and
the nineteenth-century work begins.
At Saint-Chapelle, the preservation and restoration of decorative
sculptures was another field of curious scientific experiment. In order to stop
the deterioration of the sculptures, Lassus (with the help of Viollet-le-Duc)
impregnated them with expensive and daring mixtures of hydraulic lime and
melted silica, in effect glazing the figures so as to “save them forever.”64 Often
confronted with the problem of having to copy from existing works to replace
decorative sculptures that were either severely damaged or had disappeared
altogether, Lassus would experiment with a machine which, thanks to a
tracing arm, could presumably produce a first, fairly polished sketch of
the future copy.65 But the goal of the new breed of archéologues-restaurateurs
was not to copy mechanically, a process performed with a certain sense of
helplessness and carrying a vague scent of death. The real aim was to train
sculptors and painters to work in the way ancient builders did; to produce
a living force capable of truly re-enacting history. Competitions were held
to identify the best talent. Once selected, craftsmen were subjected to a very
history re-enacted 109
exacting initiation into medieval techniques. A whole new breed of workers
was thus formed who could lay stone, sculpt or paint “as it once was done.”
Such mobilization of science and men makes salient the dialectic of loss and
recovery that underlies the ideology of restoration in the nineteenth century.
Understanding the debates as a discourse of desire instead of dwelling on
questions of authenticity allows us to transcend the kind of binary reductions
often entertained. We can, for instance, bring into more sympathetic proximity
John Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc’s arch-famous aphorisms on restoration,
which are traditionally seen as diametrically opposed. Ruskin’s severe
condemnation of any form of restoration is among the most often quoted
passage of his Seven Lamps of Architecture: “[Restoration] means the most total
destruction which a building can suffer. … Do not let us deceive ourselves
in this important matter; it is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to
restore anything that has ever been great … in architecture.”66 Quoted with
almost equal zeal is Viollet-le-Duc’s nefarious definition, written late in his
career: “To restore an edifice means neither to maintain it, nor to repair it,
nor to remake it; it means to re-establish it in a complete state which may
in fact never have actually existed at any given time.”67 Ruskin’s refusal to
touch old buildings and Viollet-le-Duc’s desire to restore them to a “finished
state” do reflect polar stances. Yet, it must be recognized that both writers
agree on the impossibility of retrieving a monument’s original appearance.
The most provocative aspect of Viollet-le-Duc’s definition is not so much his
aiming for a “finished state,” but his acknowledgment that such a state “may
have never existed.” The lucid admission does not mean that he abandoned
concerns for authenticity. It points instead to his conviction that the artisterestaurateur (with his team of workers) should have so totally “internalized”
the original spirit that created the monument that he can restore the latter
without feeling absolutely bound to what had been actually built in that
particular instance. Viollet-le-Duc expressed that idea succinctly in a letter
to his father. Commenting on the difficulties of restoring old monuments, he
used a metaphor: “One can make apples grow back on the tree, but one cannot
repair an apple cut in half [On fait bien revenir des pommes sur un pommier, mais
on ne réparera jamais une pomme coupée en deux].” No longer an antiquarian
accumulating artefacts and doctoring fragments, Viollet-le-Duc wants to
restore a living process. “To build today like the men of the Middle Ages have
done before us” is the classic expression of this philosophy of restoration.
Ruskin would of course denounce such a claim as heresy, yet he, too, wished
to transcend antiquarianism, staking out his own claim to have internalized
the nature of the Gothic.
Without pressing the analogy between Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc, I want
to emphasize their common reliance on a process of historical internalization
that pushes to the highest degree Barthes’ notion of the “referential illusion,”
whereby history is resuscitated not through the collection and taxonomy
of historical facts, but through imaginative identification. Ruskin’s famous
middle chapter “On the Nature of Gothic” in The Stones of Venice, and Viollet-
110 architecture and the historical imagination
le-Duc’s article on “Construction” in the Dictionnaire raisonné, two texts written
only a few years apart in the mid-nineteenth century, upheld in very different
ways the same idea: that the distinctive character of the Gothic was no longer
to be found in the taxonomy of a style, but rather, to use Ruskin’s own words,
“in the (medieval) workman’s heart and mind.”68 What lay in the medieval
workman’s heart and mind was of course very different for the two authors,
but both claimed to have access to it. Didron and Lassus’s demand for the
architect to renounce his “genius” was the first stage of a similar process of
identification with a remote past.
The special science historique was first developed around the restorations
of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois and Saint-Chapelle. Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois
was the pioneering project, begun around 1838, the very first medieval
monument to be restored in Paris (if we exclude Alphonse-Henri-Guy de
Gisors’ partial work at the Palais de Justice).69 It was a complex enterprise
undertaken by the city of Paris but under several jurisdictions, and designed
by two architects, Étienne Godde and Lassus. Many aspects of the project were
criticized by militants for the medieval cause, including Hugo and Didron,
who were outraged by Godde’s several demolitions and defacements. But
the parts handled by Lassus were highly praised, especially the restoration
of the Chapel of the Virgin. The latter restoration was a systematic effort
at recreating a total thirteenth-century ambiance: wood furniture, altar,
decorative painting, sculpture, and stained glass were all coordinated. The
stained glass depicting the Passion, designed by Lassus, was the first serious
attempt to recover medieval techniques and traditions of painted glass. But
the restoration of that small chapel was of course just an avant goût for what
was to come at Saint-Chapelle, the elaborate project for which Viollet-le-Duc
had joined Lassus and Duban in late 1840 with the architects Louis Sureda
and Émile Boeswillwald. Figuratively speaking, this “chapelle” set up around
the project created the perfect situation to dream a return to the Middle
Ages: a small group akin to a medieval communal workshop. The jewel-like
Sainte-Chapelle was itself the perfect vehicle to generate a phantasmagoria
of the past. Though not under the direct purview of the Commission des
monuments historiques, the project offers the most striking case in the early
history of restoration in France of a systematic, scientific archaeological effort
put to the service of a complete restoration, down to the lavish polychrome
decor. The leap from myopic, scientific-archaeological observations to a total
historical recreation couldn’t be more astonishing (Fig. 3.7). The overall effect
is stunning, and propels the viewer into an entirely new world. Viollet-le-Duc
was bewitched by such miraculous resurrection, as he was by his communion
with the group of restorers. When Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc teamed up in
1843 to draft a project for the restoration of Notre-Dame (Fig. 3.8), the winning
entry in a very limited competition juried by Hubert Rohault de Fleury,
Mérimée, and Duban, they were as explicit about their intention to conduct
a minute scientific investigation as they were about their desire to bring the
building back to its ravishing splendor:
3.7 Félix Duban. Lateral section towards the east end of the Sainte-Chapelle. Detail
from Polychromy of the west and east ends of the Sainte-Chapelle. 1844. Ink, watercolor
and wash. 92.5 × 62.2 cm. © Bernard Acloque—Centre des monuments nationaux
112 architecture and the historical imagination
3.8 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. NotreDame. Southern
facade. 1843.
Watercolor. 88.0
× 14.6 cm. MAP.
© Ministère
de la Culture /
Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand
Palais / Art
Resource, NY.
First restoration
project for NotreDame in Paris.
Not only must the artist concern himself with supporting, consolidating, and
conserving, but he must also put all his efforts toward giving back to the building,
thanks to prudent restorations, the very richness and splendor that it has been
deprived of. In this way, he will be able to preserve for posterity the unity of
appearance [“l’unité d’aspect”] and the interest of the details of the monument
under his care.70
So, two distinct points can be made concerning Viollet-le-Duc’s methodological
transition in the early 1840s. First, that the move from his private, painterly
historical visualizations to a state-sponsored restoration of a public monument
did not represent a fundamental shift, as both endeavours were equally shot
through with the fantasy of reliving the past. In fact, as Bann recently argued
concerning Louis-Philippe’s restoration of the Château de Pau around 1838,71
the desired historical repleteness in restoration, a coherence which, as he wrote,
“passed by way of the totalizing matrix of a style,” found its chief model in the
work of painters, a mode favored by Viollet-le-Duc all through the 1830s. No
doubt the kind of archaeological rigor brought to the restoration of France’s
great public monuments was of a different order than the recycling of the
medieval fortress at Pau into a “Troubadour-style” residence for the monarch
and his family. It was precisely because the notion of scrupulous authenticity
had been ruled out from the start at Pau that Bann singled out the fortress as
providing useful insight into the Romantic historical imagination. But even
in the “scientific” restorations sponsored by the Commission des monuments
historiques, imaginary time-travel was the ultimate aim, a goal to which the
scenographic power of painting was germane even if—and this is highly
significant—the new breed of architectes-restaurateurs would never (or at least
history re-enacted 113
only rarely) allow themselves to rely on overtly pictorial representations as a
means of investigation. Traditional orthogonal projection was the rule.
Following such a scenographic logic, the question of construction could
appear secondary, a contingent prop for the historical fiction. Yet, and this
is my second point, structural issues could be profitably mobilized within a
process of historical recovery. The logic of structure brought an aura of rigor
to a science des styles, allowing the restorer to renounce his emotional self and
generate the referential illusion. Furthermore, it moved the question away
from a static, external taxonomy of form toward an internal understanding
of the monument’s historical formation. Thinking the monument through
its constructive logic brought another, deeper level of fantasizing the past:
after the pictorial visualization, one could now fancy being in the position of
the original maker. Thanks to the new strength in the identification process,
Viollet-le-Duc’s consolatory interaction with the past could find a renewed
expression: literally engaged in a reparative action, he could retrieve not just
an appearance but the organic constitution of the whole monument in all its
splendor and health.
Vézelay Repaired
It is of course at Vézelay that Viollet-le-Duc’s reparative action will be
deployed in the most vigorous and literal way, with the Abbey Church of
La Madeleine in a state of imminent collapse (Fig. 3.9). Mérimée reported
that “when drawing in the church” in 1834, he heard “at every instant small
stones crumbling and falling” around him.72 It was a striking instance of
a monument in an active process of decay, yet still fully standing. Unlike
his many predecessors who couldn’t or wouldn’t dare establish a verdict,73
Viollet-le-Duc did not hesitate to issue a diagnosis and identify the required
remedies. Having first arrived at Vézelay on March 3, 1840, he finished his
examination of the building on March 11, returned to Paris on the March 13,
and presented his report to the Conseil des bâtiments civils on March 21.74
In all, he took a little more than two weeks to evaluate the work required
on such a complex and dangerously ailing building. Writing to Mérimée on
March 10, 1840, just seven days after his arrival on the site, he could already
assert with confidence: “I am finishing my work on the church of Vézelay
tomorrow. … I will be able to present to you this unfortunate church on all
its sides and show you its most hidden wounds [faire voir ses plaies les plus
cachées].”75
The use of a corporal metaphor is, of course, significant, sustaining the
sort of image Viollet-le-Duc had entertained in his “private” interaction with
medieval monuments. With his work at Vézelay for the Commission des
monuments historiques, however, that personal dimension is now sublimated
into the reaffirmation of a national tradition. The restoration was the linchpin
for Viollet-le-Duc’s lifelong crusade to revitalize French architecture through
114 architecture and the historical imagination
3.9 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Present
condition. Church
of La Madeleine
in Vézelay,
department of
the Yonne. 1840.
Watercolor.
34.5 × 134.5 cm.
MAP. © Ministère
de la Culture /
Médiathèque
du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMNGrand Palais /
Art Resource,
NY. Elevation
of the southern
facade of the
Abbey church
of La Madeleine
before Viollet-leDuc’s restoration
the revival of the Gothic. A letter to Mérimée written in April 1843 from
Vézelay makes the intersection between the personal and the national explicit:
You, Sir, who have ceaselessly lived the life of the past, you understand the joy, the
secret happiness felt when we can record in our sketchbook some of these forgotten
[historical] treasures … but how much more interesting when these findings are
made in our own country, when they are tied to our history, to our customs, to the
habits of the men who came before us. A nice portrait will always be a work that you
can contemplate with pleasure, but how much more valuable does that work becomes
when you learn the portrait is that of your grandparent.76
The portrait of the grandparent stands for the national tradition. That
passage, part of a much longer letter to Mérimée in which Viollet-le-Duc
develops his nationalist stance for the first time, makes clear how much
the biographical merges with the national, a not uncommon dimension of
patriotism. In another passage from the same letter, he underscores how
historical objects are able to trigger the imagination only when they address
subjects or legends familiar from one’s childhood. These ideas will remain
at the heart of Viollet-le-Duc’s lifelong Gothic campaign: the restoration of
the Gothic as the restoration—or the repetition, to use a Freudian term—of
familial scenes. We will see in subsequent chapters how literally that can
be understood. But, in a more general sense, it associates the Gothic with
a process of birth.
history re-enacted 115
This area has been left blank intentionally. To view Figure 3.9 as a
double-page spread, please refer to the printed version of this book
Indeed, at Vézelay, Viollet-le-Duc’s chief goal in the restoration was not
to restore the church as a pristine “Romanesque” masterpiece, but rather to
present it as the birthplace of the Gothic, the church illustrating the transition
between the first experiments in vaulted construction of the eleventh century
and a final resolution in the fully developed thirteenth-century Gothic.77 One
of the most willful—and also most successful—interventions carried out by
Viollet-le-Duc at Vézelay was the transformation of the church’s main nave
into a unified Romanesque space (Fig. 3.10). Prior to his reconstruction, only six
of the original ten bays were Romanesque, the other four having been rebuilt
during the thirteenth century in classic Gothic style. Viollet-le-Duc’s decision
to unify stylistically the nave appears to have been gradual. At first, only the
fourth, fifth, and sixth bays, which were in any case already Romanesque,
were reconstructed for urgent structural reasons. Later, however, he sought
to continue the reconstruction, this time following an overt stylistic rationale.
In June 1844 he submitted to the Ministère de l’Intérieur a project to rebuild
three of the four Gothic bays in their presumably original Romanesque
style in order for “this beautiful eleventh-century nave” to “be complete.”78
Only the last Gothic bay was left intact as evidence of the thirteenth-century
alterations. The statement about seeking “completeness” may be misleading,
however. The reconstruction was not a means of celebrating Romanesque
architecture in itself so much as a way to distinguish clearly one stage of the
116 architecture and the historical imagination
(above) 3.10 Abbey church of La Madeleine in
Vézelay. General view of nave looking west.
Photograph by Gerard Franceshi. MAP.
(below) 3.11 Abbey church of La Madeleine
in Vézelay. View of the vaults in the narthex.
Photograph by Camille Enlart. MAP.
Both photographs © Ministère de la Culture /
Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMNGrand Palais / Art Resource, NY
structural evolution leading to the Gothic:
The reconstructed eleventh-century nave was
a first experiment which would be pushed
further with the twelfth-century transitional
narthex and the thirteenth-century Gothic
transept and choir (Fig. 3.11).79
Viollet-le-Duc’s fascination with the phased
evolution of Gothic architecture dovetailed
with widespread contemporary interest
in transitional moments in the history of
architecture. In notes written while traveling,
Mérimée had shown great sensitivity to this
kind of quick passage from one epoch to the
other within a single building. This is how
he describes his impressions of moving from
the Romanesque nave to the Gothic choir
of the Cathedral of Le Mans around 1835:
“The impression felt, is that … one leaves the
temple of an ancient religion to enter in that
of a new one.”80 Mérimée had expressed his
interest in such transitional phenomena on
many occasions. His “Essai sur l’architecture
religieuse du moyen âge,” commissioned by
the Comité des arts et monuments in 1837,
comprised a very eloquent description of how
Gothic architecture, while borrowing elements
from the “Byzantine” (read Romanesque), had
progressively transformed them into a new
and synthetic whole thanks to an entirely new
organizing principle.
Mérimée’s role in the restoration of Vézelay
should not be underestimated. His work
as Inspecteur général was carried out with
extraordinary acumen and sensitivity, and
with tireless zeal. It led to a series of important
history re-enacted 117
archaeological publications that reflect an empirical approach, as he was
always suspicious of systems and generalizations. But he also had a great
talent for synthetic judgment.81 His “Essai sur l’architecture du moyen âge”
remains to this day a balanced study tackling the intriguing question of the
transition from Romanesque to Gothic. Mérimée’s prudent attitude did not,
however, stem from a lack of passion. Vézelay, for instance, had been for
him a revelation. Ever since his first visit in 1834, he had completely fallen
under the spell of La Madeleine and became the chief advocate for a complete
restoration. As we saw, he hand picked Viollet-le-Duc for the project and
remained his closest advisor throughout the whole enterprise. The restoration
of Vézelay can indeed serve to illustrate Mérimée’s reflections about the
emergence of the Gothic in his “Essai sur l’architecture au moyen âge”: not
just the repairing of a beautiful church, but also the story of the formation of a
new architecture. It was the contrast between styles that was to dominate the
experience, not each of the styles in itself. The transition from Romanesque
to Gothic followed its own autonomous course. In his remarks about the
Cathedral of Le Mans, for example, Mérimée made sure that his reader would
not take too literally his remark about the architectural transition being akin
to moving from one religion to another: “I do not believe that there was the
slightest difference between Christianity in the twelfth and the thirteenth
centuries.”82 The impulse for the transformation originates from the builders
themselves, from their exploration of a new principle of lightness. In seeing
the transitions, one could thus trace a new architecture in the making.
In addition to Mérimée and Viollet-le-Duc, many among the first generation
of Romantic architects had also shown great interest in transitional moments
in architecture: Jean-Nicolas Huyot, Duban, Labrouste, Léon Vaudoyer, and
Albert Lenoir, to name the most prominent ones, were all fascinated by traces
of historical developments in the making. But their interest in the phenomena
stemmed from a slightly different impulse than that of Mérimée and Violletle-Duc: not bound to the development of a structural idea, their investigation
was more concerned with documenting a civilizing process. One of the earliest
manifestations of the idea in the nineteenth century, and probably the most
famous, was the curious Musée des monuments français, created during the
Revolutionary period by Alexandre Lenoir, who converted the Monastère des
Petits-Augustins into a journey through time, albeit in a somewhat makeshift
fashion, and without much attention to its architectural component. Félix
Duban would propose to continue the task in his project for the transformation
of the site into the École des Beaux-Arts, which he submitted to the Conseil
des bâtiments civils in 1833. Duban planned to build an “open-air museum”
of French architectural history in the forecourt on rue Bonaparte. Placing
a Gothic porch on the south side, directly across from the fragment of the
Château d’Anet installed by Lenoir, he sought to offer “for contemplation
and study” a “summary of our national architecture”: “on the left, fragments
of Gothic art; in the center, the forms of the architecture of Louis XII [the arc
de Gaillon facing the Palais des Études]; on the right, those of the epoch of
118 architecture and the historical imagination
Henry II.”83 The didactic display was not only a response to the program for
the École, since Duban carried out a similar scheme at the Château de Blois,
a long restoration campaign beginning in 1843, a year before Viollet-le-Duc
proposed to recreate the Romanesque nave at Vézelay. Like Viollet-le-Duc,
at Blois, Duban sought to distinguish—at the risk of disregarding historical
evidence—tableaux of the various phases in the progressive transformation
of French architecture from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and classical
periods, a conception analyzed in great detail recently by Richard Wittman.84
The extent to which he may have influenced Viollet-le-Duc, Duban’s
museological and scenographic approach must be seen as separate from
Viollet-le-Duc’s delineation of stages in the structural formation of Gothic
architecture. Duban’s work was part of a larger investigation into the nature of
historical development in architecture. The question of architecture’s relation
to historical change was a key concern in Romantic architectural circles in
France in the 1830s. One of its earliest theoretical formulations is probably
Duban’s own 1827 fourth-year Envoi de Rome produced at the Académie de
France, documenting the successive transformations of the Porticus Octaviae
in ancient Rome. Henri Labrouste followed suit with his famous 1829 analysis
of the three Doric temples at Paestum, also carried out as his fourth-year Envoi
at the Académie. Documenting modifications through time was a means of
exploring architecture in its relationship with historical conditions. In the
wake of the devaluation of canonical classicism, the question of the adaptation
of contemporary architecture to social, cultural, and material conditions had
moved to the center of current debates.
I have refrained from bringing up these architectural issues until now,
because in Viollet-le-Duc’s early development, the issue of restituting the past
largely prevailed over the problem of the creation of a modern architecture.
It is actually quite surprising that, in the 1830s, this future apostle of progress
was relatively uninterested in the question of architecture’s adaptation to
modern conditions. In his correspondence with his father while traveling
in Italy, where there is ample evidence of his distrust of modernity, the
issue of historical evolution is rarely broached. Viollet-le-Duc made little
effort to follow the complex thread of architectural transformations in Italy,
an investigation that had been central to Romantic pensionnaires in the late
1820s. This neglect reflected his unusual preoccupation with the painterly
mode of apprehension, but it may also have betrayed the lingering influence
of his first Neoclassical mentors, Huvé, Leclère, and Fontaine. In Neoclassical
theory, the question of the adaptation of architecture to modern conditions
was secondary to the issue of understanding the unity of a style. The abbé
Marc-Antoine Laugier’s primitive hut, David Leroy’s peristyle, Quatremère
de Quincy’s notion of type, and even Percier and Fontaine’s freer play
within the classical repertoire were all the results of various strategies to
capture the fundamental nature of a style. Viollet-le-Duc’s effort to “see”
and “represent” architecture faithfully in Italy could be described as a
painterly investigation of “style.”
history re-enacted 119
Comparing in greater detail his restoration of Vézelay with Duban’s work
on the Château de Blois is revealing in this regard. Duban’s goal in creating a
scenography of architectural transformations was to stage historical tableaux,
a “history in stone,” as he described it himself.85 The Château de Blois had been
one of the most prestigious residences of the Orléans dynasty. It contained,
among several significant historical elements, the Salle des états where pivotal
meetings of the États généraux were held in 1576, and most notably in 1588,
marking turning points in the rise of absolutism. Duban’s restoration work
at Blois comprised a means to display in architectural terms this historical
dynamic, from “the violence of the feudal Middle Ages … to the more stable
and refined world of the Renaissance,” as Wittman put it.86 Duban’s interest
in the rise of an arcuated architecture in the early Renaissance was partly
motivated by its ties to the rise of Protestantism, as a broad civilizing process.
Literary and art critic Hippolyte Fortoul pointed to the early Renaissance as
a time of “rebirth of order,” spreading “its light and its harmony over the
confused elements of a [Gothic] art without measure or rule.”87 The period
stood between two forms of oppression, religious (in the Middle Ages) and
political (in the age of absolutism). Fortoul’s historical ideas, which would
prove influential for the first generation of Romantic architects, have been
elaborated in fascinating detail by Bergdoll in his book on Vaudoyer.88 The
architectural works that these Romantics found most compelling were not
so much examples of a mature style as specimens of transition, hybrid forms
where history’s mark could be most easily detected. For Duban, architecture
was historical decor in the noblest sense of the term: it framed social
interactions as the Salle des états at Blois expressed so powerfully with its
agonistic, double-nave spatial structure. Duban’s aim in creating an “open-air
museum” at the École des Beaux-Arts or at Blois, where the “specimens of the
architecture of four centuries” were laid out chronologically,89 was to allow
an apprehension of a historical evolution, architecture being, according to a
motto first coined by Fortoul, “la véritable écriture des peuples [the true writing
of people].”90
In contrast, Viollet-le-Duc, like Mérimée, turned all his attention to what
could be called the autonomous process of “style” development. What he
sought to capture in his transformation of the Abbey Church at Vézelay
was not a piece of French history per se, but the emergence of a specifically
French way of building, the growth of an architecture. For him, transition
in architecture was only of interest in delineating a process of birth. Hence,
Viollet-le-Duc situated the historical problematic (and its resolution) within
the realm of construction rather than in the social world. In the first of a series
of articles on the history of Gothic construction which he published in the
Annales archéologiques in 1844, an extended theoretical essay intimately related
to his work at Vézelay, which will be discussed at length in the next chapter,
Viollet-le-Duc noted in passing that while the Gothic “revolution” had been
taking place in architecture, the country was enduring “a century of political
misfortunes and fears.” Why such an architectural transformation at that
120 architecture and the historical imagination
historical juncture? he asked rhetorically: “It is not in our subject to look for a
cause; we will limit ourselves to indicating its effect.”91 By concentrating solely
on the construction problems associated with the rise of the Gothic, Viollet-leDuc is obviously not trying to de-historicize architecture. He simply means to
state that, for him, architecture is not so much a “reflection” of a history being
played out elsewhere, but in and of itself constitutes an historical event.
Significantly, Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration cannot be understood merely
by experiencing the church visually, like Duban’s open-air museum. “To be
understood, [Gothic architecture] demands a tension in the mind,”92 he would
later write. The various parts of the church were not historical tableaux, but
various stages in the solving of a problem. In order for that solution to be
clearly understood, it had to be either physically re-enacted, as he would do
by dismantling and rebuilding the church, or mentally re-enacted, as he did
through his writing, an activity he began in 1844 and continued throughout
his life. In retrospect, we can already detect the difference between Duban’s
and Viollet-le-Duc’s historical attitudes by comparing their respective
pictorial experiments of the 1830s, discussed in the previous chapter. Whereas
Duban’s painted fantasies possessed a strikingly static quality, focusing on
decor as a tableau depicting a vanished existence, Viollet-le-Duc’s paintings
(paradigmatically, his Taormina reconstruction) sought to represent human
use of the buildings. In his evolution from the 1830s to the 1840s, Viollet-leDuc’s interest would shift from rituals of use to rituals of construction, yet
both embodied gestures and actions dependent upon architecture.
The shift from use to structure, however, allowed a deepening of the process
of mental identification with the Middle Ages that Viollet-le-Duc had begun
in the 1830s. Faced for the first time at Vézelay with challenging structural
problems, having to dismantle and rebuild large portions of a crumbling
church, Viollet-le-Duc could easily slip into the fantasy of being himself a
medieval builder, just as earlier he had pictorially put himself in the midst
of the Colosseum in Rome or the ancient theatre at Taormina in the midst of
a performance. Many anecdotes from Viollet-le-Duc’s career lend credence
to this speculation. The engraver Claude Sauvageot reported that Viollet-leDuc liked to joke about having lived five or six centuries earlier, saying that
his archaeological work was born from the memory of that previous life.93
There is also the curious set of articles in the first issue of the Gazette des BeauxArts (1859) titled “Apparition of Villard de Honnecourt,” in which Violletle-Duc literally puts himself in the mind of Villard—the close homology of
their names perhaps easing the connection. There are countless other, if more
minute, examples of Viollet-le-Duc playing the past-being-resuscitated-in-thepresent, such as his signature in the woodcuts imitating a medieval mason’s
identifying marks, or later, his peculiar habit of donning a medieval gown in
his study on rue Condorcet. But all these various cues pale in comparison to
the testimony of the letter to his father I have partially quoted in Chapter 1,
written in 1844, exactly at the moment when he was first articulating his socalled rationalist doctrine:
history re-enacted 121
When I find myself alone, before my pillars, my walls and my cornices, I cast a loving
eye upon those silent stones. I go round them with more care, more precaution, I
seek their diseases, their pains, in short we understand one another better, for very
few people understand us, very few know what we tell one another. … There is an
indefinable charm in this affinity, a charm all the more vivid because it is unknown,
secret, intimate, silent. And are not stones akin to books, and don’t you feel all the
same toward your old silent books?
What is particularly extraordinary in Viollet-le-Duc’s empathic experience
with the monument is that it is only a first stage in navigating the larger
historical field, a journey mediated by the workmen and his tools. He goes
on to write:
At least the books were copied or printed by men who were strangers to those who
had conceived them, but stones! How many old, shiny stones have I looked at with
an interest that must have seemed most ridiculous to passers-by. First, I sought their
quality, reflecting on the calculation that had placed them there, then understanding
how the tool had worked, and consequently the workman who had guided it, his
admonitions, the varying degree of care he applied, depending on whether his
master was present or not, the small means he took to hasten his labor. Then, dancing
before my eyes, like a magic lantern, the astonishment of the onlooker in front of
the completed work. Criticism, with the ravages of time in its shadow, an enemy
that never ceases its attacks, then the architect’s joy, then the dreams of glory, and
soon ungratefulness, oblivion, misery, even, then the crowd which for centuries
rubs against the stones, polishing them, then the demolishers of all ages, and their
oversights, so precious to us. In all of that, there are a thousand poems, a thousand
novels, and the man, the man who screams, who breaks his work, then regrets it,
would like to bring back to life the mutilated body, but cannot, because the same goes
for human creations as for God’s creations; apples will come back to the apple tree,
but the apple cut in half cannot be repaired.94
Communicating in turn with the mason’s tool, the mind of the worker, the
master mason and the idle onlooker, Viollet-le-Duc finally reaches into the
vastness of history. He is subjected to a sort of temporal empathy that allows
him to feel the devastating action of time itself. Gone is the distancing filter of
a frozen pictorial representation. History is now re-enacted through actions
and events; the medieval church being now the medium for a journey into the
depth of time. In the opening pages of his articles in the Annales archéologiques,
Viollet-le-Duc related the rise of archaeological interest in the Middle Ages as
follows: “First seduced by the charm and the richness of the buildings of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, [a group of architects] were progressively
led to go further in.95 ”A few paragraphs later, he uses the same formulation to
describe the shift of interest from polychromy to structure (a barely disguised
account of his own development): “First preoccupied with the exterior form
and the envelope of monuments, [artist-archaeologists] were soon led to
examine the means used by the old builders.”96 Relating the passage from the
seduction of appearances to an understanding of the means, from surface into
depth, Viollet-le-Duc can disclose the secret “lost art” of the “old builders.”
Not interested in identifying structural properties in abstracto, he seeks to get
122 architecture and the historical imagination
in touch with a past, lived reality. Directing his imagination toward the inside
of the phenomenon, Viollet-le-Duc identifies with a process of building, and
projects himself into the monument, which then becomes a second home.
History in this way repeats itself in a quasi-Freudian sense.
Notes
1
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, August 10, 1836, Lettres d’Italie
(1836–1837) adressées à sa famille, ed. Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc (Paris: Léonce
Laget, 1971), hereafter LI, 118.
2
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, November 28, 1836, LI, 202–203.
Disparaging remarks about his uncle are common in Viollet-le-Duc’s Italian
letters; his father often agrees.
3
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, November 28, 1836, LI, 200–201.
4
See Middleton, “Ingres et Viollet-le-Duc, a Roman Encounter,” Gazette des BeauxArts 95 (April 1980): 147–152.
5
“Espèce de naufrage de mes opinions,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father EmmanuelLouis, February 8, 1837, LI, 246.
6
“Pourquoi marcher, puiqu’en avançant je perds à chaque pas un plaisir, une
impression, un bonheur? Pourquoi suis-je créé, puisqu’en semant et recueillant
toute une vie, on arrive à la fin les mains vides, l’âme nue et aride?” Viollet-leDuc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, August 20, 1837, LI, 339.
7
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Rome, January 20, 1837, LI, 236.
8
“Le gothique est triste, mystique, recueilli,” Viollet-le-Duc to his father
Emmanuel-Louis, May 25, 1836, LI, 71.
9
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, February 21, 1837, LI, 254.
10
Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle,
9 vols. (Paris: B. Bance, A. Morel et Cie., 1858–1875), hereafter DRA, vol. 1, i–ii.
11
See LI, 243,
12
I found a note and description of that album, now lost, in The Gentlemen’s
Magazine 10 (July–December 1838): 301; see also Revue du XIXe siècle 7 (1867):
129.
13
This interesting album is unfortunately lost. See Sauvageot’s detailed
descriptions of the 21 watercolors in “Les aquarelles de la reine Amélie,”
Encyclopédie d’architecture, hereafter EdA, 9 (1880): 120–131; see also Geneviève
Viollet-le-Duc, “Viollet-le-Duc, apprenti sans maître,” Le Voyage d’Italie d’Eugène
Viollet-le-Duc 1836–1837, Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Jacques Aillagon,
eds. (Paris: École nationale des Beaux-Arts, 1987), 20.
14
At least according to both Viollet-le-Duc’s father and Léon Gaucherel; see,
respectively, Emmanuel-Louis Viollet-le-Duc to Viollet-le-Duc, Paris, May 2,
1837, LI, 298, and Léon Gaucherel to Viollet-le-Duc, Paris, June 26, 1837, LI, 319.
15
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Venice, July 9, 1837, LI, 326.
16
Middleton, “Viollet-le-Duc and the Rational Gothic Tradition,” PhD diss.,
Cambridge University, 1958, unpaged.
history re-enacted 123
17
Michael Camille, The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame: Medievalism and the Monsters of
Modernity (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 12.
18
See Voyages en Italie et en Grèce de Prosper Morey (1805–1886), exh. cat., ed. Claude
Pétry (Nancy: Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1990), 62.
19
According to Elisabeth Williams, Viollet-le-Duc was responding to an invitation
from the deputy of the department of the Aude, the military man FrançoisDominique Espéronnier, but the reasons remain unclear; see Williams, “Le
premier projet de restauration de Viollet-le-Duc,” Les monuments historiques de la
France 3 (1973): 50.
20
Williams, “Le premier projet de restauration de Viollet-le-Duc,” 54.
21
See Kevin Murphy, “Restoring Rouen: The Politics of Preservation in July
Monarchy France,” Word and Image 11, no. 2 (April–June 1995): 196 and 199.
22
See the minutes of the February 23, 1840, meeting in Françoise Bercé, Les premiers
travaux de la Commission des monuments historiques, 1837–1848 (Paris: Picard,
1979), 44.
23
Jean-Michel Leniaud particularly emphasized that aspect; see his Viollet-le-Duc
ou les délires du système (Paris: Menges, 1994), 75–77.
24
Arcisse de Caumont himself refers to Viollet-le-Duc’s opinion on the medieval
architecture of Auvergne and Provence in his Cours d’antiquités monumentales
professé à Caen en 1830. Histoire de l’art dans l’ouest de la France depuis les temps les
plus reculés jusqu’au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Lance, 1831), vol. 4, 317.
25
Report by Cavé to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, February 11, 1840; quoted in Kevin
Murphy, Memory and Modernity. Viollet-le-Duc at Vézelay (University Park, Penn.:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000) 92.
26
Bercé, Les premiers travaux de la Commission des monuments historiques, 1837–
1848, 12.
27
Quoted in Kevin Murphy, Memory and Modernity, 92.
28
Prosper Mérimée, “Bibliographie: Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
française par M. Viollet-le-Duc,” Le Moniteur universel, Saturday, December 30,
1854; reprinted in La correspondance Mérimée—Viollet-le-Duc, ed. Françoise Bercé
(Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 2001), 218.
29
Quoted in Francis Salet, La Madeleine de Vézelay (Melun: Librairie d’Argences,
1948), 52.
30
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Florence, October 8, 1836, LI, 161.
31
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Florence, October 8, 1836, LI, 161.
32
At least according to Viollet-le-Duc’s father; see Emmanuel-Louis Viollet-le-Duc
to Viollet-le-Duc, Paris, September 28, 1836, LI, 163–164.
33
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Rome, March 1, 1837, LI, 257.
34
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, January 27, 1837, LI, 243.
35
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, April 3, 1837, LI, 276.
36
Charles Lenormant to Prosper Mérimée, July 20, 1841; quoted in Pierre-Marie
Auzas, Eugène Viollet-le Duc 1814–1879 (Paris: Caisse nationale des monuments
historiques, 1979), 39.
124 architecture and the historical imagination
37
This statement is reported in a letter from Mérimée to Sainte-Beuve, Cannes,
February 13, 1864, Prosper Mérimée, Correspondance générale, ed. Maurice
Parturier, 17 vols. (Paris: Le Divan et Privat, 1941–1964), vol. 12, 57.
38
See Robin Middleton, “The Rationalist Interpretations of Classicism of Léonce
Reynaud and Viollet-le-Duc,” AA Files 11 (1986): 29–48, and Barry Bergdoll, Léon
Vaudoyer: Historicism in the Age of Industry (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press,
1994), 121–122.
39
See, in particular, Comte Charles-Forbes-René de Montalembert, “De l’état
actuel de l’art religieux en France” (1837), Du vandalisme et du Catholicisme dans
l’art (Paris: Debécourt, 1839), 188–192.
40
See the comments by Françoise Bercé in Des monuments historiques au Patrimoine
du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours (Paris: Flammarion, 2000), 32–33.
41
See in particular Jean-Michel Leniaud’s chapter on restoration in Jean-Baptiste
Lassus 1807–1857 (Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1980), 77–116, and his
magisterial summation, Les cathédrales au XIXe siècle (Paris: Economica, 1993).
See also Françoise Bercé’s account in Les premiers travaux de la Commission des
monuments historiques, 1837–1848, and Françoise Choay’s classic study, L’allégorie
du patrimoine (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992), published in English as The
Invention of the Historic Monument, trans. Lauren M. O’Connell (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
42
César Daly, “Restauration projetée de Notre-Dame de Paris,” Revue générale de
l’architecture et des travaux publics, hereafter RGATP, 4 (1843), col. 140.
43
Reported in the minutes of the June 17, 1840 meeting of the Commission,
see Bercé, Les premiers travaux de la Commission des monuments historiques,
1837–1848, 80.
44
See the minutes of meetings on June 10 and 17, 1840, Bercé, Les premiers travaux
de la Commission des monuments historiques, 1837–1848, 76 and 80.
45
See the session dated March 19, 1838, Bercé, Les premiers travaux de la Commission
des monuments historiques, 1837–1848, 36; see also Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus
1807–1857, 57.
46
Paul Léon, La vie des monuments français (Paris: Picard, 1951), 371.
47
Baron Ferdinand de Guilhermy, L’Univers, July 7, 1844; quoted in Leniaud, JeanBaptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 81.
48
Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York: Twayne Publishers,
1995), 3–10.
49
“Ce vide immense, que le temps et la destruction ont laissé entre les anciens et
nous, nous rend l’espoir de découvertes toujours nouvelles, et nous redonne
l’illusion de l’infini dont notre âme a besoin. De là cette ambition toujours
excitée et jamais satisfaite; de là cette convoitise, cette envie,” AntoineChrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, Le Jupiter olympien (Paris: Chez De Bure
frères, 1815), iii–iv.
50
“Lorsque nous sommes arrivés à ces régions où une nuit épaisse nous dérobe la
vue des objets, nous aimons encore mieux y placer des fictions ou des fantômes,
que de les laisser désertes,” Quatremère de Quincy, Le Jupiter olympien, iv.
51
Adolphe-Napoléon Didron, “Archéologie chrétienne. Histoire et restauration
de Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, ” Revue française 12 (May–June 1839): 288–330;
quoted in Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 78.
history re-enacted 125
52
Didron, “Archéologie chrétienne. Histoire et restauration de Saint-Germainl’Auxerrois,” 319; quoted in Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 82.
53
Victor Hugo, “Guerre aux démolisseurs!” Revue des Deux Mondes 5 (January–
February 1832): 607–622; republished in Patrice Béghain, Guerre aux démolisseurs!
Hugo, Proust, Barrès, un combat pour le patrimoine (Propières: Imprimerie du Mont
Saint-Rigaud, 1997), 67.
54
Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus, “De l’art et de l’archéologie,” Annales
archéologiques 2, hereafter AA (1845): 334.
55
Roland Barthes, “The Discourse of History,” trans. and intro. Stephen Bann,
Comparative Criticism 3 (1981): 10–11.
56
Roland Barthes, “The Reality Effect,” The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard
Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 148. Barthes does not
provide a reference for the quote.
57
Quoted in Paul Léon, Mérimée et son temps (Paris: PUF, 1962), 295–296.
58
Barthes, “The Discourse of History,” 19–20.
59
See the testimony of Viollet-le-Duc in his preface to the Catalogue des livres,
dessins, estampes … composant le cabinet de feu M. J.-B.-A. Lassus (Paris: J. F. Delion,
1858); See also Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 30–35.
60
Viollet-le-Duc, “Restoration,” DRA, vol. 8, 34; On Restoration, trans. Charles
Wethered (London: Sampson Low, Marston Low, and Searle, 1875), 70–71.
61
At Sainte-Chapelle, this goal had been stated explicitly: “Melt the new work
with the ancient in order to generate a perfect illusion.” From a report of a
commission set up to oversee the restoration of the stained glass at SaintChapelle. It was headed by Michel-Eugène Chevreul, and its members included
Ferdinand de Lasteyrie, Alexandre Brongniart, Paul Delaroche, Ferdinand de
Guilhermy, Félix Duban, Léon Vaudoyer, and Viollet-le-Duc, among many
others; quoted in Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 88.
62
Adolphe-Napoléon Didron, “Archéologie Nationale. Le cloître des Billettes–
Notre-Dame de Paris,” L’Univers 9, August 5, 1841, unpaged; quoted in Leniaud,
Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 107.
63
Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 107.
64
Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 106.
65
Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 107.
66
John Ruskin, “The Seven Lamps of Architecture” (1849), The Works of John
Ruskin, E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, eds. (London: George Allen,
1903), vol. 8, 242.
67
“Restaurer un édifice, ce n’est pas l’entretenir, le réparer ou le refaire, c’est
le rétablir dans un état complet qui peut n’avoir jamais existé à un moment
donné,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 8, 14.
68
John Ruskin explaining his work on medieval architecture in a letter to his
father, February 22, 1852; quoted in Tim Hilton, John Ruskin. The Early Years
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 169.
69
On the restoration of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, see Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste
Lassus 1807–1857, 57–59 and 167–172. Didron’s “Archéologie chrétienne. Histoire
et restauration de Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois,” published in Revue française
126 architecture and the historical imagination
in 1839, is also informative, though written in a very polemical tone in the
first years of the enterprise; Leniaud quotes from an unpublished history of
Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois by N. M. Troche, “Histoire de la collégiale de SaintGermain-l’Auxerrois,” Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris, ms. 428.
70
Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus, Projet de restauration de Notre-Dame de
Paris. Rapport adressé à M. le Ministre de la justice et des cultes, annexé au projet de
restauration, remis le 31 janvier 1843 (Paris: Lacombe, 1843), 4.
71
Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History, 142–143.
72
Prosper Mérimée, Notes d’un voyage dans le Midi de la France (Paris: Adam Biro,
1989), 63.
73
Relatively little information is available about Viollet-le-Duc’s predecessors,
but it seems clear that their delay in submitting reports to the Commission des
monuments historiques stemmed from the enormous difficulty of the task. See
the recent summary of the work done prior to Viollet-le-Duc’s tenure in Arnaud
Timbert, “La restauration de La Madeleine de Vézelay: Eugène Viollet-le-Duc et
François-Nicolas Comynet: une correspondance retrouvée (1840–1842),” Bulletin
de la société des fouilles archéologiques et des monuments historiques de l’Yonne 16
(1999): 57–58.
74
See Timbert, “La restauration de La Madeleine de Vézelay,” 58.
75
“Je finis demain mon travail sur l’église de Vézelay. … Je pourrai vous
présenter cette malheureuse église sous toutes ses faces et vous faire voir ses
plaies les plus cachées,” Viollet-le-Duc to Mérimée, Vézelay, March 10, 1840 in
Prosper Mérimée, Lettres à Viollet-le-Duc (1839–1870) (Paris: Champion, 1914),
1–2.
76
“Vous, Monsieur, qui avez vécu sans cesse de cette vie du passé, vous
comprendrez la joie, le bonheur secret que l’on éprouve lorsqu’on peut
rapporter dans son calepin quelques-uns de ces trésors oubliés … mais combien
ces trouvailles sont-elles plus intéressantes pour nous lorsqu’elles sont faites
dans notre pays, qu’elles se rattachent à notre histoire, à nos moeurs, aux
habitudes des hommes qui nous ont précédés. Un beau portrait sera toujours
une oeuvre que vous regarderez avec plaisir, mais quelle valeur prendra cette
oeuvre à vos yeux si vous apprenez que ce portrait est celui de votre aïeul!”
Viollet-le-Duc to Mérimée, April 23, 1843, in Bercé, La correspondance Mérimée—
Viollet-le-Duc, 278–279.
77
There are a number of studies on the restoration of Vézelay. See Francis Salet,
La Madeleine de Vézelay; Salet, “Viollet-le-Duc à Vézelay,” Monuments historiques
de la France 9 (1965): 33–42; Elisabeth Wolstenholme, “Viollet-le-Duc and
Mérimée: A Comparative Study of their Theories on Restoration,” master’s
thesis, University of Manchester, September 1966; Lydwine Saulnier, “Vézelay:
la restauration de l’église de la Madeleine,” in Viollet-le-Duc, ed. Bruno Foucart
(Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1980), 59–60; Eugenio
Vassallo, “Il progeto di restauro: Viollet-le-Duc e la Madeleine di Vézelay,”
Quaderni dell’Istituto di storia dell’architetura 15–20 (1990–1992): 903–912; and
Kevin Murphy, Memory and Modernity: Viollet-le-Duc at Vézelay (University
Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). More recently, Arnaud
Timbert has renewed our picture of Vézelay through his diligent archival work.
See his “La restauration de La Madeleine de Vézelay,” 57–66, and Viollet-le-Duc:
Le chantier de restauration de la Madeleine de Vézelay. Correspondance (1840–1841)
(Auxerre: Société des Fouilles archéologiques et des Monuments historiques de
l’Yonne, 2005). See also the doctoral work produced under Timbert’s direction:
history re-enacted 127
Francesca Lupo, “Diari di bordo dagli inediti edgli archivi di Viollet-le-Duc
progettista e restauratore,” PhD diss., Polytechnic University, Turin, 2009.
78
Viollet-le-Duc to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, June 3, 1844, quoted in Kevin
Murphy, Memory and Modernity, 113.
79
Murphy, Memory and Modernity, 123.
80
Prosper Mérimée, Notes de voyage dans l’Ouest de la France (Paris: Adam Biro,
1989), 33; quoted in Elisabeth Williams, “The Perception of Romanesque Art in
the Romantic Period: Archaeological Attitudes in France in the 1820s and 1830s,”
Forum for Modern Language Studies 21 (1985): 314.
81
Merimée’s most prominent writings on medieval architecture are the various
Notes de voyage published between 1835 and 1840; the “Essai sur l’architecture
du moyen âge particulièrement en France,” Annuaire historique pour l’année 1838
publié par la société de l’histoire de France (1837): 283–327; (with Albert Lenoir)
Instructions du Comité historiques des arts et monuments. Architecture militaire du
moyen âge (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1843); (with Auguste Leprévost and Albert
Lenoir) Instructions du Comité historiques des arts et monuments. Architecture
du moyen âge, civilisation chrétienne (Paris: C. Baudry, 1846); and Notice sur les
peintures de l’église de Saint-Savin (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1845).
82
Prosper Mérimée, Notes de voyage dans l’Ouest de la France, 33.
83
See David Van Zanten, “Félix Duban and the Buildings of the École des
Beaux-Arts, 1832–1840,” JSAH 37, no. 3 (October 1978), 164; see also David Van
Zanten’s Designing Paris: The Architecture of Duban, Labrouste, Duc, and Vaudoyer
(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1987), 71–82.
84
Richard Wittman, “Félix Duban’s Didactic Restoration of the Château de Blois,”
JSAH 55, no. 4 (December 1996): 412–434.
85
Félix Duban from an undated competition report; quoted in Wittman, “Félix
Duban’s Didactic Restoration the Château de Blois,” 421.
86
Wittman, “Félix Duban’s Didactic Restoration the Château de Blois,” 422.
87
Hyppolite Fortoul, De l’art en Allemagne, 2 vols. (Paris: Jules Labitte LibraireÉditeur, 1841), vol. 2, 559; quoted in Bergdoll, Léon Vaudoyer, 301, n. 99.
88
Bergdoll, Léon Vaudoyer, 122–131.
89
Félix Duban, “Description sommaire des travaux … au château de Blois,” 1866;
quoted in Wittman, “Félix Duban’s Didactic Restoration,” 421.
90
Hippolyte Fortoul, De l’art en Allemagne, vol. 1, 177.
91
“Il n’entre pas dans notre sujet d’en chercher la cause; nous nous bornerons à en
signaler les effets,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction des édifices religieux en
France depuis le commencement du christianisme jusqu’au XVIe siècle, ” AA 1
(1844), 184.
92
“Cet art [exige] pour être compris, une tension de l’esprit,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA,
vol. 7, 521–22.
93
Reported by Claude Sauvageot, “Viollet-le-Duc et son œuvre dessiné,” EdA 9
(1880), 134.
94
“Lorsque je me trouve seul, alors, en face de mes piliers, mes murs et mes
corniches, alors je laisse tomber sur ces pierres muettes un regard d’amour. Je
tourne autour d’elles avec plus de précautions, plus de soins, je cherche leurs
128 architecture and the historical imagination
maladies, leurs souffrances, nous nous comprenons mieux enfin, car bien peu
nous comprennent, bien peu savent ce que nous pouvons nous dire. … Il y a
un charme indéfinissable dans cette sympathie, charme d’autant plus vif qu’il
est méconnu, qu’il est secret, intime, muet. Et les pierres ne sont-elles pas
des livres et n’éprouves-tu pas tout cela pour tes vieux bouquins silencieux?
Encore, les bouquins ont-ils été copies, ou imprimés par des hommes étrangers
à ceux qui les ont conçus, mais les pierres! que de vieilles pierres luisantes je
me suis pris à regarder avec une attraction qui devait paraître bien ridicule aux
passants. D’abord je cherchais leur qualité, je pensais au calcul de celui qui les
avait placées là, puis je compris le travail de l’outil, par suite l’ouvrier, celui
qui le guidait, les remontrances de ce dernier, le soin plus ou moins grand de
cet ouvrier selon que le maître était présent ou absent. Ses petits moyens pour
hâter son travail puis, comme une lanterne magique, passait devant mes yeux
l’étonnement du badaud quant l’œuvre était achevée. Les critiques, puis les
ravages du temps, cet ennemi qui ne cesse jamais ses attaques, puis la joie de
l’architecte, les rêves de gloire, et bientôt l’ingratitude, l’oubli, la misère même,
puis cette foule qui pendant des siècles se frotte sur cette pierre qu’elle polit, puis
les démolisseurs de tous les âges, leurs oublis, si précieux pour nous. Il y a dans
tout cela mille poèmes, mille romans, et l’homme, l’homme qui crie, qui lutte
contre le temps, l’homme qui brise son œuvre, puis qui en a regret, qui voudrait
rendre la vie à ce corps qu’il a mutilé, et qui ne le peut plus, car il en est un peu
des créations de l’homme, comme de celle de la providence, on fait bien revenir
des pommes sur un pommier, mais on ne réparera jamais une pomme coupe
en deux” Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Vézelay, April 28, 1844,
MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1835–1847,” doc. 162.
95
Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction des édifices religieux en France depuis le
commencement du christianisme jusqu’au XVIe siècle,” AA 1 (1844), 180. The
full passage reads as follows: “Cependant, de leur côté, quelques architectes
étudiaient ces monuments si longtemps oubliés; ils y découvrirent bientôt des
qualités immenses, un art profondément raisonné, et des beautés sans nombre.
D’abord séduits par le charme et la richesse des édifices des XVe et XVIe siècles,
ils étaient amenés peu à peu à pénétrer plus avant.”
96
“Préoccupés d’abord de la forme extérieure et de l’enveloppe des monuments
qu’ils voyaient, ont bientôt été amenés à examiner les moyens qu’employaient
les constructeurs anciens, ” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction des édifices
religieux en France depuis le commencement du christianisme jusqu’au XVIe
siècle,” AA 1 (1844), 180.
4
Reviving the Gothic
Joining the Revivalists
Viollet-le-Duc’s first publication was a serial article on Gothic construction.
The never-completed series appeared between 1844 and 1847 in Annales
archéologiques, a proselytizing organ for the cause of l’art chrétien. With this
long panegyric on the structural logic of medieval churches, among the first
works on the history of Gothic construction ever published, Viollet-le-Duc
advertised himself for the first time as a proponent of the Gothic Revival,
joining the camp of militant activists. The chief editor of Annales, the
archaeologist Alphonse-Napoléon Didron, was indeed the chorus master of
an extended group of archaeologists, architects, painters, sculptors, musicians
and engravers,1 promoting, in a polemical spirit, not just the preservation of
old French monuments, but a return to the Gothic, in the hope of regenerating
France’s presumably ailing art. Supported by the political figure at the
core of the liberal Catholic movement, the influential Comte Charles de
Montalembert, Annales had an ambitious agenda. It was to be “the mouthpiece
of an archaeological apostolate,” as Didron proclaimed in the introduction to
the first issue.2
Viollet-le-Duc’s articles cannot be abstracted from this apostolic mission.
He too expressed his new faith in the “great law of Christianity” that makes
“the gospel the basis of modern civilization.”3 In the midst of his explanation
of Gothic construction, quoting Joseph de Maistre, he claims that Catholicism
is the “natural way” of the French people.4 Viollet-le-Duc was not the first to
argue that the Gothic was specially adapted to France; even the pragmatic
Jean Rondelet in the introduction to the fifth edition of his L’art de bâtir (1827)
had made that claim.5 However the nationalist argument had never been
couched in religious terms before. It is curious that such a statement would
be inserted into a discussion of a technical nature, especially by a man who
would later be known for his staunch anticlericalism. But the mid-1840s was
a special period within Viollet-le-Duc’s development, a time during which he
took some distance from his mentor Mérimée, swayed as he was by the “NeoCatholicism” of Didron and the supporters of l’art chrétien. Their brand of
130 architecture and the historical imagination
Catholicism was, however, far removed from ultramontane piety: these men
sought to reconcile Christianity with progress, co-opting aesthetics into an
ambitious program of social reform. Like the Saint-Simonians, with whom
they have great kinship, the Neo-Catholics considered architecture the most
social art, and therefore gave it the highest priority.
The best means of gauging the general tenor of Annales archéologiques is
to consider Didron’s remarkable Iconographie chrétienne. Histoire de Dieu,
published in 1843 as part of the Instructions du Comité des arts et monuments in
the prestigious Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France. According
to Émile Mâle, Didron’s Iconographie chrétienne counts among the first global
interpretations of religious art of the Middle Ages.6 As part of the “Instructions”
of the Comité des arts et monuments, of which Didron was the secretary,
it was meant to provide general “scientific” guidelines for the Comité’s
correspondents. Yet Didron’s Histoire de Dieu is far from a neutral collection
of medieval Christian icons: it provides an ambitious interpretative history
heavily stamped with Orientalism, and relied upon, among other sources,
Friedrich Creuzer’s great Symbolik as translated and augmented by French
Hellenist Joseph Guigniaut. Its focus is the iconography of the Christian
divinity. Divided into four main sections, it studies representations of each
figure in turn: God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, concluding with
a section on icons of the Trinity. Using a comparative method drawn from the
sciences, Didron’s interpretation is nonetheless highly biased. One subtext is
clear: inspired by the myth of the eternal gospel of Joachim de Fiore popular in
the nineteenth century, his history of the Trinity is a general metaphor for the
three stages of the history of humanity as a whole, a highly unorthodox aspect
that critics were quick to underscore. An anonymous reviewer of Annales de
philosophie chrétienne associated Didron with Émile Barrault, Prosper Enfantin
(known as père Enfantin), Pierre Leroux, and Edgar Quinet. He described the
book as a “perfidious and dangerous mixture” of “all humanitarian, Buddhist,
pagan theories.”7 Didron’s system, he asserted, is “all physiological,” in line
with Saint-Simonian doctrine.8
The qualification “physiological” is not inappropriate. Following a general
trend in archaeological studies,9 Didron was inspired by the natural sciences,
a field he had studied in the 1820s. He thus understood the iconography
in medieval churches as a coherent “organic” system in which every
icon is in “correlation” with the rest: “A statue that appears isolated and
incomprehensible takes on meaning when it is seen in relation to the one that
precedes and the one that follows it.”10 For example, Didron writes of the
nimbus that it is “in iconography, what fingers or teats are in zoology: a rather
small element to the eye, but a very important one for the idea.”11 His reliance
on the organic metaphor connects his iconographic study with Viollet-leDuc’s articles on Gothic construction, in which the organic coherence of the
cathedral’s structure is emphasized, each member being subordinated to the
whole. The latter’s constructive analysis in Annales should not, therefore, be
seen as a narrow technical determinism divorced from a more ambitious
reviving the gothic 131
system of meaning. It is only part of a coherent body of studies serving to
demonstrate the perfect unity of the Catholic monument, as Lamennais
described so powerfully in the third volume of his Esquisse d’une philosophie
published in 1840.
I will analyze in a subsequent chapter Viollet-le-Duc’s contribution to
Annales archéologiques. For the time being, I simply want to emphasize that
he was working in concert with a group devoted to the Gothic cause. We
can track his first acquaintance with Didron to around 1835. Didron had
originally turned to medieval archaeology inspired by Victor Hugo, but in
the early 1830s, had shifted toward Neo-Catholicism, entering the orbit of
dissident Saint-Simonian Philippe Buchez, and regularly publishing in the
latter’s journal L’Européen. In 1848, Didron wrote in Annales that “a great
number of friends, nay, an entire school, have contributed to this journal.”12
Buchez was indeed one of the fountainheads of the Gothic Revival in France.
In his attempt to restore Christian spirituality in the modern world, this
leftist Neo-Catholic attributed to medieval architecture an important role.
His “school” held regular lectures in the house of Dr. Ulysse Trélat a few
meters away from Viollet-le-Duc’s family house on rue Chabanais, Trélat
himself being a close friend of the Viollet-le-Ducs. We can safely assume
that Viollet-le-Duc père attended Buchez’s lectures, as he contributed
anonymously to his journal.13 And it is compelling to think that Violletle-Duc fils also attended those gatherings, in which art and architecture
were such frequent topics of discussion. Eugène’s relation with Buchez is
confirmed by the fact that in 1834 he enrolled with his father in L’Institut
historique, a learned society dominated, from the moment of its foundation,
by the Bucheziens.14 Didron was also affiliated to the Institut, participating
actively in its 1835 congress.15
No document confirms that Viollet-le-Duc and Didron became friends
during this period, but at least we know that they had contact and that they
were both exposed to the teachings of Buchez. This being said, nothing about
Buchez’s teachings is mentioned in Viollet-le-Duc’s Italian correspondence
of 1836–37, nor are there any signs of his having adopted a Gothic Revival
stance. It is therefore more likely that it was only upon his return to France,
having established contact with Lassus in 1837, that Viollet-le-Duc was drawn
more seriously toward the revivalists. His recollection in the preface of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture that his love of Gothic intensified after
his Italian journey seems to corroborate this. We do not know if Lassus had
contacts with Buchez, but being among Didron’s close friends, it is highly
probable that he was exposed to Buchez’s doctrine in one way or another.16
Viollet-le-Duc, for his part, must have attended Didron’s very popular lectures
on medieval iconography at the Bibliothèque royale starting in 1838. So the
trio at the core of Annales archéologiques, Didron, Lassus, and Viollet-le-Duc,
must have formed in the late 1830s. The archaeologist Baron Ferdinand de
Guilhermy, contributing like Didron to the Catholic journal L’Univers in its
liberal period,17 is another key figure.
132 architecture and the historical imagination
Whenever the group formed, it was clearly around the highly publicized
restorations of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois and Sainte-Chapelle that the NeoGothic clan crystallized. Lassus was active on both projects, though never
as chief architect. At Sainte-Chapelle, he was Premier inspecteur from the
beginning, in late 1836, his special knowledge of Gothic and this building
in particular conferring upon him unusual authority with Duban. Violletle-Duc joined the team as Sous-inspecteur only four years later, but we can
imagine that he was following the evolution of the work before that time.
Together with Louis Sureda and Émile Boeswillwald, the team of restorers
enjoyed, according to Viollet-le-Duc’s testimony of 1857, a truly unique sense
of camaraderie and harmony:
Similarity in taste, a charming edifice to restore, subject of vast and inexhaustible
studies, these are forms of happiness that leave a brilliant impression upon the first
pages of one’s life. M. Duban treated us as collaborators rather than subordinates.
Our team consisted of Lassus, Sureda, now architect to the queen of Spain, and
myself. Our hours of work were the best of the day. Each of us arrived cheerfully at
the office housed within the porch’s nasty attic, and we never left without the promise
of coming back early the next day. I can still see the small dingy café where we
lunched in front of our cherished edifice, gazing at it lovingly. We were imagining it
restored, sparkling as it is today, seeing beyond its miseries and mutilations. Of all of
us, Lassus was the oldest, perhaps also the most ambitious. As for myself, it seemed
that the whole of life could have been happily circumscribed in that solitary court,
under the blackened buttresses of Sainte-Chapelle.18
We can easily understand why Viollet-le-Duc enjoyed such perfect happiness
among this small group of restorers. He always longed to find a place where
he would truly belong. His correspondence of the early 1840s shows how
much he was subject to feelings of despair and solitude. He writes to his wife
that his heart “is always anxious, always smitten with remorse, … suffers
from everything.”19 In another, he speaks of his “irresistible need for rest, yet
rest tires me more than the most relentless kind of work. At times, I fear to
be driven to madness, as my mind is plagued by a thousand different things.
… I am so lonely.”20 He found solace only in the midst of “his old SainteChapelle.” “There,” he writes again to his wife, “everything pleases me,
everything is done as I feel it should be, everything proceeds regularly and
without efforts; there I am with people who are skilful, active, obedient, and
hard workers.”21 The orderly and dedicated work of repairing the old chapel
generated a feeling of union rarely felt before.
There are thus two separate sites to Viollet-le-Duc’s initiation to restoration
in the early 1840s: Vézelay and Sainte-Chapelle. At Vézelay, under the close
mentorship of Mérimée, Viollet-le-Duc developed his practical abilities: the
restoration of La Madeleine involved a dicey construction problem through
which he fully assumed the role of master builder, virtually rebuilding the
monument anew. Moreover, being in the provinces, Vézelay represented a
reaching out toward the larger French territory, concretely engaging with
a “national” architectural tradition. Viollet-le-Duc spent the 1840s on a sort
reviving the gothic 133
of perpetual touring mission through the provinces for the Commission des
monuments historiques and the Administration des cultes, an extraordinarily
strenuous circuit that did not diminish in intensity even after he began work
at Notre-Dame in the second half of 1845. These pilgrimages on horseback
throughout the French countryside, often in company of Mérimée, who
generously shared his knowledge of medieval architecture, are crucial to
the special relation Viollet-le-Duc established with medieval monuments,
including its nationalist cast. These tours constituted his own extended
initiatory tour de France as described by George Sand in her proletarian novel
Le compagnon du Tour de France (1840). Work at Vézelay was the symbolic
fulcrum of his new grasp of French architecture.
Sainte-Chapelle, in contrast, provided Viollet-le-Duc with a “cénacle” in
the Romantic sense of the term: a small coterie of passionate individuals
tied by friendship and reunited to foment a literary or artistic revolution.
In opposition to Mérimée’s anti-sectarian and anti-dogmatic propensities, it
spurred militant and doctrinaire tendencies in Viollet-le-Duc. The cénacle of
Sainte-Chapelle would eventually crystallize around the vociferous Didron
and the editorial offices of the journal Annales archéologiques, founded in 1844.
When Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc began their vast and ambitious restoration of
Notre-Dame in 1845, their architectural crusade expanded to a larger arena.
But despite that increased public exposure, the virtues of working silently and
tenaciously, out of the limelight and with the mutual support of a happy few,
will be an enduring image throughout Viollet-le-Duc’s life. Already in 1836,
inspired by Balzac and perhaps Buchez, Viollet-le-Duc described to his father
the workings of society, emphasizing the importance of small brotherhoods.22
He divided Parisian society into three distinct “classes”: the active, the passive,
and the reactive. The active class was the leading, rich and fashionable group
of social or cultural actors, “Tout-Paris” as Balzac would later call it.23 The
passive was the general mass of people. The reactive, the class with which
Viollet-le-Duc obviously identified, was “poor, small, emergent, but stubborn,
conscientious, inflexible, … leading its struggle silently, and sometimes in
the public arena.”24 This silent class would be given its greatest portrayal by
Balzac in the second section of Illusions perdues published three years later
(a reference all the more significant in our context since Balzac modeled
his cénacle on Buchez and his entourage).25 The clan Didron may not have
been quite so philosophical and silent as in the portrait sketched by Balzac;
but its members certainly thought of themselves as a small brotherhood
working against fashionable trends. They were working toward the goal of
regenerating French architecture.
The Gothic as Excess
If anything betrays the Neo-Catholic leanings of the Gothic faction, and in
particular its chorus-leader Didron, it was the group’s eloquently abrasive
134 architecture and the historical imagination
assaults on the establishment. Inspired by an ecclesiastical tradition that
needed to anathematize, the whole movement for l’art chrétien, deeply
influenced by Lamennais’s arresting style, formed, in Sainte-Beuve’s words,
“a fiery and violent militia … waging war in the newspapers.”26 Disputes
had flared already in the 1830s around the issue of the preservation and
restoration of medieval monuments. These polemics would continue into
the 1840s, notably around the restoration of the damaged northern tower
of the Basilica of Saint-Denis by François Debret, whose incompetence was
violently denounced by Mérimée, leading to Viollet-le-Duc’s appointment
as architecte en chef in November 1846.27 But the public debates of the 1840s
acquired a new dimension when they shifted to the more controversial
question of reviving the Gothic in the modern world, quarrels spurred in
part by the Neo-Gothic design for the new Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde in
Paris. The decade up to the 1848 Revolution became the symbolic fulcrum
of a French battle of styles, which Viollet-le-Duc’s son Eugène-Louis would
later call “The Seven Years’ War.”28 Key voices in this engagement, Violletle-Duc and Lassus were drawn into the center of the architectural debate
raging in Paris. Though they stood against the Académie, their defense of
an exclusive revivalism was disconcerting to many in progressive circles.
Literally possessed by their role as restorers of the old French ways of
building, Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus had to confront not only the older
establishment, but also the first generation of Romantic architects. The more
their investment in the past sought public expression, the more they had to
face up to the paradoxical nature of their architectural reform, founded as it
was on regression and rupture.
The revivalists’ uncompromising attitude in the face of modern conditions
was publicly exposed during the protracted and bitter debate between 1842
and 1850 over the isolation of Sainte-Chapelle within the new Palais de Justice
complex, a controversy all the more significant in that it pit the revivalists
against Louis Duc, prominent architect of the first Romantic generation. The
issue revolved around new constructions for the Palais, which surrounded
Sainte-Chapelle and was prejudicial to its monumental integrity. Duban
and Lassus together with the Commission des monuments historiques were
naturally alarmed, and a long series of alternative proposals, compromises,
and acrimonious disputes ensued. The story has been well documented and
brilliantly analyzed by Katherine Fischer Taylor, so I will only summarize the
substance of the debate.29 According to plans approved in November 1842, the
courtyard facade planned for the Palais would stand only five meters from
the apsidal buttresses of the Sainte-Chapelle, and its increased height would
reduce the amount of light reaching the chapel’s stained-glass windows.
Moreover, a new south wing would crowd and further darken the chapel. The
chapel’s restorers therefore proposed alternative solutions in order for the
small building to be isolated as much as possible. Their argument developed
largely around the need for proper ventilation and light, but their goal
extended beyond such pragmatic needs. The Commission des monuments
reviving the gothic 135
historiques justified its demands by emphasizing the crucial nature of the
Sainte-Chapelle restoration project as a model for all their future enterprises.30
For Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc, however, the request for more space and air
for their precious chapel had greater symbolic dimensions, reflecting their
conviction about the artistic superiority of Gothic over modern architecture.
They wanted to set apart the Gothic jewel as an exemplar of French Christian
architecture. In contrast, the architects of the Palais de Justice, Louis Duc and
Étienne-Théodore Dommey, saw Sainte-Chapelle as merely one element to
be woven into the overall planning of the judiciary complex, in a strategy of
adaptation to each micro-environment surrounding the building. For them,
the ensemble was conceived as a series of changing subjective tableaux rather
than one stylistically unified whole. If during Duban’s tenure as architecte
en chef of Sainte-Chapelle a compromise had been struck, the controversy
started up with renewed ferocity within a fortnight of Lassus taking
command of the restoration in July 1849.31 Style, for Lassus and his group,
had become “une passion exclusive” as Duc and Dommey aptly described it,32
an exclusivity not unrelated to the dogmatic stance of an earlier academic
tradition. A series of interesting reports followed, in which the growing
polarization of the architectural community into Gothicists and classicists is
plainly acknowledged. Duc would evolve toward an uncompromising French
classicism, while Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc remained firm in their revivalist
stance. Thanks to the intervention of Montalembert and Mérimée, among
many others, Duc and Dommey were forced to change their plan around the
Cour du Mai.
In order to understand better the stakes surrounding the debate, it is useful
to consider the criticism voiced against the Gothic revivalists themselves. The
first attack against the group immediately followed the launching of Annales
archéologiques in 1844, and was penned by Alexandre-Albert Lenoir and Léon
Vaudoyer, who like Louis Duc, were prominent architects of the Romantic
faction. It was published in the popular illustrated weekly Le Magasin
pittoresque, part of their on-going history of French architecture published
in installments between 1839 and 1852. Interrupting their historical account,
which had by then reached the period of the Renaissance, they thought it
necessary to address the opinion of those architects so “falsely impassioned
as to claim that the originality of our national art was inopportunely
suppressed with the advent of the Renaissance.”33 The idea of returning to
the Gothic seemed particularly absurd to Lenoir and Vaudoyer, who were
advocates of the development of a new architecture based on the principle
of “indefinite perfectibility.”34 Why would Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc, they
asked, “want to abdicate all rights to creation” and copy the architecture of
the Middle Ages?35
In their argument against the Gothic, Lenoir and Vaudoyer reiterated
on a more polemical note an opinion that their friend and mentor, the art
critic Hippolyte Fortoul had expressed earlier: Gothic was an architecture
without rule or order, devoid of principle, “except that of freedom without
136 architecture and the historical imagination
limits.”36 Overly emancipated, Gothic could not be the basis of any fruitful
and productive “development.” It produced architectural masterpieces,
but of an eccentric sort, for a short-lived moment that interrupted the more
systematic and rational advancement of an arcuated architecture during the
Romanesque period and the early Renaissance.
They criticized Gothic in terms not altogether unfamiliar, which recalled
Quatremère de Quincy’s earlier academic condemnation, a kinship that both
Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc were only too happy to point out in their respective
responses published in Annales archéologiques in 1845.37 By that date, the Gothic
cathedral and the Greek temple had been firmly established within Romantic
discourse as the highest points of Western creativity. Émile Barrault’s SaintSimonian tract Aux artistes. Du passé et de l’avenir des Beaux-Arts of 1830,
well known to the first generation of Romantic architects, placed Greek
and Gothic at history’s peaks, born of the plenitude of “organic” historical
periods. Lenoir and Vaudoyer were reacting against that well-established
Saint-Simonian historical theory of alternating critical and organic periods,
adopting instead the model of a progrès continu inspired by Pierre Leroux.
According to Leroux’s republican call for modernity, “the time for the secret
doctrine is passed.”38 If it remains fundamental to understand and take into
account history’s unfolding, it is equally essential to avoid getting mesmerized
by “historical phantoms”39: “Let yourself be carried away by the life of your
century,” Leroux pleaded.40 Fortoul, Vaudoyer, and Lenoir adapted Leroux’s
ideas within their own speculations on architecture and art. The Gothic
became, in their criticism, the sort of phantom that Leroux denounced among
Neo-Catholics. In architectural terms, the Gothic was too extreme and too
volatile. It was the product of fanaticism, not so much a religious fanaticism
as a fanaticism of freedom,41 which amounted to a mere dissipation of energy.
In the fourth volume of his Histoire de France published in 1833, Jules Michelet
had articulated the same critique if in a more sympathetic manner. In the
short éclaircissement entitled “La passion comme principe d’art au moyen
âge,” Michelet described Gothic cathedrals as “an architecture of miracle,”
but of an absurd sort, petrified and immobile.42 This architecture was pure
delight, but illusory.
The group around Fortoul turned instead to precedents that were
“primordial types still in their infancy rather than in their last period of
development.”43 They sought specimens capable of development, in which
the freedom inherent to the arcuated architecture of the Christian era (or of
the “religions de l’esprit” to use Fortoul’s Romantic formulation44) could be
subjected to a process of “regulation” following the lead experiences of the first
Italian Renaissance. In Fortoul’s important theoretical statement published in
De l’art en Allemagne of 1841–1842, the greatest challenge for contemporary
architects was to find the proper ordonnance for a curvilinear architecture
whose curvilinearity resisted “being squared,” as it were.45 Fortoul frequently
evoked the tying of the finite with the infinite, which suggests the influence of
Schelling, German idealism, and the aesthetic of Victor Cousin.
reviving the gothic 137
Fortoul’s resistance to the Gothic was obviously an attempt to repress an
unruly object not in accord with his ideas of a refined eclecticism. We have
already discussed his mocking of the Gothic as an art that mostly appealed to
writers and poets.46 Fortoul thought that such a literary appropriation of the
cathedral was a “problem” inherent to the Gothic, and further proof that it
was an improper source for modern architects. Thus re-introducing Hugo’s
dialectic between the book and the building, Fortoul suggests that it is by
staying clear of the literary that architecture can paradoxically maintain its
status as “la véritable écriture des peuples [the true writing of nations],” to use
his favorite motto. But bringing the “Gothic novel” in the tribunal against
modern Gothic reflected a fear of popular intrusions in the artistic domain.
Fortoul wrote of his disdain for the popular infatuation with the style,
that “ridiculous mania”47 which had overtaken the otherwise legitimate
rediscovery of France’s medieval heritage. In 1844, Lenoir and Vaudoyer also
relegated the Gothic to the status of an art for the overly enthusiastic. They
acknowledged the cathedral’s “powerful effects,”48 but with the proviso that
its appeal satisfied emotion seekers rather than the refined artist: “Let’s return
to the systematic and non-emotive study of our Christian monuments.”49 An
infatuation rather than a serious architectural pursuit, the Gothic had become
a spectacle. The period in which Lenoir and Vaudoyer were writing followed
nearly two decades during which Gothic architecture had been the rage on the
capital’s stage and in dioramas. Gothic cathedrals and abbeys in ruins were a
staple in the increasing popularization of visual culture during the latter part
of the Restoration and the July Monarchy (Fig. 4.1). The recurring assertion
(voiced in turn by Michelet, Fortoul, Lenoir, Vaudoyer, Désiré Raoul-Rochette
and later Ernest Renan) that the Gothic nave was a sort of mise-en-scène held
up by an unsightly system of permanent scaffolding in the form of flying
buttresses, already a common trope in the eighteenth century, conjured up
the image of a theatrical set. It was a mere prop, an entertainment rather than
a solid, integral piece of architecture. So if Fortoul’s, Lenoir’s, and Vaudoyer’s
attacks on the Gothic had a conservative aim, it was that of protecting true
art from the degradation of popular taste. Gothic was melodrama, good
for sectarians such as Didron. The Académie was to voice the same type of
criticism. Even the liberal journal Le National could not help but mock the
naive vulgarity of the new infatuation for the Gothic. I quote a characteristic
passage from a review of the newly renovated Sainte-Chapelle:
If it had been the young Sicambre Clovis or the old Saxon King of Kent whom the
archbishop brought into the freshly restored Sainte-Chapelle, we would happily
concede that upon seeing this great gilded shrine, colored in all its parts, this
architecture sprinkled with gold, crimson, and azure, … this blue vault imitating sky
and stars, the two naive barbarians, filled with wonder and awed by the sensation,
would again exclaim, as in the chronicle: “My father! Is it into paradise that you are
bringing me?” But for us, less idolatrous, endowed with less candor and materialism
…, such a celestial Jerusalem shimmering with badigeon, … partake of theatre and
pagodas, of a fetish or of a wax figure.50
4.1 Louis Boulanger. Sabbath Round. 1829. Oil on canvas. 162.0 × 121.0 cm.
Maison de Victor Hugo, Paris. © Maisons de Victor Hugo / Roger-Viollet
reviving the gothic 139
This sort of criticism could hardly have come as a surprise to Viollet-le-Duc,
whose own contact with the Gothic had begun with the creation of set designs
in Cicéri’s studio (Fig. 4.2), as well as decorative borders for Baron Taylor.
He was still producing these borders in 1844. And very soon (1848–1849), he
would begin drawing the famous parade of chimeras for the upper gallery
at Notre-Dame de Paris, so essential to the spectacular visual effect of the
cathedral. Viollet-le-Duc was never bothered by the Gothic’s popular appeal;
indeed, he welcomed it as a remnant of French Rabelaisian verve and excess,
instinctively aware of its grotesque, transgressive power. Yet, at the same time,
Lenoir’s and Vaudoyer’s assertion that the Gothic had “no rules, no rhythm,
no prosody” must have appeared outdated to him. As he was either directing
or participating in the three most prestigious restoration projects undertaken
in France at the time—Vézelay, Sainte-Chapelle, and Notre-Dame—his
relation to the Middle Ages had become too concrete and practical to take
such accusations very seriously. In his short but effective reply to Lenoir and
Vaudoyer, “De l’art étranger et l’art national,” Viollet-le-Duc simply turned
their criticism against itself. It was they who were caught in a Troubadour
image of the Gothic: “There are still many people, and very knowledgeable
ones at that,” he wrote, “whom, when hearing about the Gothic, see looming
around them a thousand pinnacles, laces of stone (to use an expression
currently in vogue), countless spindles of slender colonnettes, … myriad
4.2 Pierre-Luc
Charles Cicéri.
Stage set for
the “Ballet of
the Nuns” in
Meyerbeer’s
opera Robert
le Diable as
designed by
scenery painter
Pierre Luc
Charles Cicéri
and stage
designer Henri
Duponchel for
the premiere
production at
the Paris Opera’s
Salle Le Peletier
in 1831. Opera
Garnier, Paris. ©
Erich Lessing /
Art Resource, NY
140 architecture and the historical imagination
grinning diablotins, luxurious greenery intertwined with grotesque scenes.”51
Such prejudice, he claimed, generates a confusion of genres similar to that of
a man trying to read through a jumbled library, where he would find “novels
mixed up with scientific treatises, chapters in stories ending with songs.”52
Gothic should not be judged from such confused representation, warned
Viollet-le-Duc, but through the “serious study of archaeology.”53
Archaeology Practiced
To bring archaeology to the rescue was a risky strategy, as Lenoir and
Vaudoyer’s criticism consisted not only in showing that Gothic architecture
was a popular fad, but also in asking why anyone would wish to “copy” a
thirteenth-century church. Here lies the gulf between Viollet-le-Duc and
his detractors. Lenoir, Vaudoyer, and Fortoul were strong supporters
of the preservation movement; all three were or would be involved in
France’s patrimonial institutions. But they conceived of restoration work as
fundamentally different from contemporary architecture. In his remarkable
transformation of the medieval monastery of Saint-Martin des Champs to
house the Conservatoire des arts et métiers, for example, Léon Vaudoyer
created a highly refined dialectic between the restored portion of the old
monastery and the additions. He kept a sense of continuity between the old
and the new, but also sought to emphasize the expression of the classicized
skeletal construction of the additions, as Barry Bergdoll recently noted54:
“Given the progress accomplished in the art of construction,” wrote Lenoir
and Vaudoyer in the polemic against the Gothic revivalists which they
published in Le Magasin pittoresque, “let us try to create a style of architecture
that, while being part of that uninterrupted chain that must unite our modern
art to that of the ancients, keeps nonetheless a character of originality.”55
For Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus, there was no fundamental distinction
between new works and Gothic monuments of the thirteenth century. The
case of the new sacristy for Notre-Dame, whose design they had just finished
revising in May 1845, is a perfect example. The new building was an exercise
in adapting thirteenth-century Gothic to the program of a modern sacristy. It
was arguably natural to tend toward a seamless continuity in attaching this
small appendix to the great cathedral church (Fig. 4.3). Yet many architects
thought that a strategy of “pastiche” was a missed occasion for the modern
architect. A report issued by the Conseil des bâtiments civils and signed
by Mérimée stipulated that the real issue in designing the sacristy was not
so much the “exact imitation of the style of the cathedral” as “the respect
for modern proprieties and for the elements of the given program.”56 In Le
Magasin pittoresque, an anonymous reviewer of the new building designed by
Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus sarcastically observed that, “in truth, this sacristy
is so perfectly harmonious with the main building, that it seems as if it was
born naturally from it as a child emerging from his mother’s womb.”57 The
reviving the gothic 141
image was perfectly appropriate, since the challenge for Lassus and Violletle-Duc was precisely the rebirth of Gothic. They conceived their work entirely
in terms of filiations: the revival of the French ways of building. Completely
immersed in the medieval world, theirs was not merely a specialized practice
bracketed off from commissions for new buildings, but a hope for the renewal
of architecture in the nineteenth century. It was thus normal for Viollet-leDuc, in his response to Lenoir and Vaudoyer, to describe archaeology as a
practice rather than a scholarly pursuit: “Long considered a purely speculative
study … , archæology was on the contrary the first to see to the training of
practitioners.”58 Shunning abstraction, archaeology was an act of historical
re-enactment. The design and construction of new buildings thus afforded
opportunity for further “restorations.”
The case of Maison Courmont in Paris marked another interesting
instance of a new work conceived as a restoration. The apartment building
on rue de Berlin (now rue de Liège) is notable for being Viollet-le-Duc’s first
known original, independent building, if we exclude the sacristy at NotreDame designed with Lassus. In his 1956 dissertation on the architecture
of Viollet-le-Duc, John Jacobus claimed that the “abstract severity and
restlessness” of Viollet-le-Duc’s design for Maison Courmont should be
seen as a direct response to the accusations of imitation leveled against
him following the Sainte-Clotilde controversy.59 In fact, from a watercolor
in the private family archives of Henri Courmont’s descendants, we know
4.3 Attributed
to Henri le Secq.
New Sacristy
at Notre-Dame.
Published
1851–1853. Salted
paper print
from waxed
paper negative.
23.9 × 33.4 cm.
Pl. 4 in Paris
Photographique,
a photographic
album edited by
Blanquart-Evrard.
Collection
Centre Canadien
d’Architecture /
Canadian Centre
for Architecture,
Montréal
142 architecture and the historical imagination
4.4 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Courmont
House, rue de
Berlin [now rue
de Liège]. April
15, 1846. Graphite
and watercolor.
16.0 × 32.0 cm.
Private collection.
Early study for
the street and
court elevations.
that Viollet-le-Duc designed the building in early April 1846, before the
Académie’s report condemning Gothic revivalism was published, and
well before any reactions were aired in the press (Figs. 4.4 and 4.5). The
apartment house sited in the newly developed Quartier de l’Europe
is certainly of striking simplicity, barren even, given the propensity for
surface ornamentation in vogue at the time. Its abstract angularity caught
the attention of Henry-Russell Hitchcock, who compared its sobriety to
the “realism” of advanced British architecture of the period.60 Back in
1846, however, its austerity, rather than being read as “modern,” would
have been considered an attempt at medievalizing architecture. Its pointed
roof, its horizontal dripstone, its corbelled and trifolié windows, the arched
ground-floor of its street façade, its tourelle-shaped stairwell and pointed
arches door in the court, all handled in a deliberately primitive manner,
were unmistakably medieval, a style particularly well suited to the patron,
Henri Courmont, a keen medievalist and close friend of Mérimée’s who
had just been named Chef du bureau of the Commission des monuments
historiques. To be sure, the medieval elements were not applied capriciously
as a costume: every corbel, every profile, has been carefully studied to suit
their particular position within the hierarchy of the façade, as architectural
historian Françoise Boudon has well described.61
In an aside to the fourth installment of “De la construction des édifices
religieux en France,” written in May 1846, just after he designed Maison
Courmont, Viollet-le-Duc celebrated the traditional simplicity of Parisian
urban houses in a text that reads as the program for his project on rue de Berlin:
“[F]our out of five houses, in Paris, are still built by master masons, and if we
reviving the gothic 143
still hold to a faint trace of our national architecture, it is there that we can
find it. Bold layouts, sometimes elegant, almost always subordinated to needs
and common sense.”62 If Parisian houses are now covered with “confused and
ridiculous details,” he adds, it is due to a corruption of taste brought about by
architects whose major concern has typically been to treat façades as classical
monuments. Behind that decorative skin, however, there can still be found the
sound logic of older building methods, a medieval tradition of common sense
and economy to which Viollet-le-Duc wishes to return: “the construction
system [of private houses of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries] can be
applied to our current needs, capable of accommodating modest budgets. It
is an art, as we ceaselessly repeat, and an art is such only when it is made for
everybody.”
The house’s bold simplicity was certainly provocative, as can be judged
from a comparison with the houses illustrated in the first volume of Victor
Calliat’s Parallèle des maisons de Paris construites depuis 1830 jusqu’à nos jours
(1850), in which no less than seven copper plates are devoted to Viollet-leDuc’s Maison Courmont, including a colored plate. But the house on rue
de Berlin had no overt signs of architectural modernity as it was conceived
before 1848: it explores no new decorative form, it introduces no new
material or construction techniques, nor any new social program. In fact,
the house was largely ignored before Jacobus and Hitchcock, Calliat being
4.5 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Facade on
the rue de Berlin
[now rue de
Liège]. 1846. Ink
and wash. 28.0 ×
32.0 cm. Private
collection. Street
elevation for
Courmont House.
4.6 Comparison of the facades of an apartment building on rue Taitbout in Paris by
architect Jean-Baptiste Lassus (above) and Courmont House on rue de Liège in Paris
by E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc (below). Both designed in 1846. Photos by the author
reviving the gothic 145
the only one to pay any attention to it in Viollet-le-Duc’s time. The economy
and simplicity was not conceived as a polemical statement of architectural
modernity, it was a means to revive the medieval spirit. The same sobriety
and exact dripstone motif characterize an apartment house on rue Taitbout
designed by Lassus around the same period (Fig. 4.6). The two architects,
working in tandem, wanted to demonstrate the true nature of the Parisian
or French urban vernacular. In contrast to the elaborate thirteenth-century
ecclesiastical Gothic of the sacristy of Notre-Dame, these modest houses by
Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus were revivalist at a grass-roots level. In Viollet-leDuc’s words, reviving the Gothic was to adopt, “without further ado, an art
made for us, of our own dimension, without any external influences.”63 It
was simply retrieving “French” common sense. The full implications of such
a revivalist position, however, would only be fully articulated following the
controversy generated by the Académie des Beaux-Arts’s declaration of war
against the Gothic.
The Sainte-Clotilde Controversy
On August 17, 1846, the Conseil des bâtiments civils, charged with
reviewing construction or restoration of all public buildings until 1848,
approved with a one-majority vote the decision to erect a church (which
would later be named Sainte-Clotilde) on Place de Bellechasse in Paris in the
Gothic style, following the design of Neoclassical architect Franz Christian
Gau.64 The approval came following an extended series of rejections by the
Conseil, who saw many faults in Gau’s design and resisted the choice of
the Gothic for such a prominent Parisian church.65 The positive outcome
surprised many, since the Conseil was reputedly controlled, in Didron’s
words, by “sworn mortal enemies of the Gothic system,” the pointed
arch entering “their mind as painfully as a pin in the flesh.”66 Some
historians have claimed that the Préfet de la Seine, the Comte ClaudePhilibert Barthelot de Rambuteau, had forced the Conseil to approve the
plans under the threat of a full-scale inquiry into the role of the Conseil
in the disastrous restoration works at the Basilica of Saint-Denis.67 That
may well be the case, but as Didron himself acknowledged, the Conseil
was not so homogeneously rearguarded. There were among its members
open-minded men like Jean Vatout (the president), Baron Taylor, Duban,
Ludovic Vitet, and Mérimée. To be sure, none were militant revivalists,
but the Conseil, who adhered to the principle “to neither proscribe nor
prescribe,”68 had approved a great number of Gothic designs since the
mid-1830s, mostly in the provinces. Didron claimed that:
not a week goes by without several projects in the Gothic style being submitted to
the Conseil des bâtiments civils. The Conseil brutally rejects three quarters of them;
but, whether forced or not, it does approve a few, and these can be seen from a far
distance and make for a good propaganda.69
146 architecture and the historical imagination
Several construction projects for Gothic churches had been launched in the
province in the early 1840s: the Basilica of Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours near
Rouen (1840–1844), Saint-Nicolas in Nantes (1844–1865), and the façade of
the Church of Saint-Ouen in Rouen (1846–1851), to name the most prominent.
Didron delighted in listing the new Gothic constructions sprouting across the
country in the frequent reports he published in the pages of Annales. In an
article titled “Renaissance du moyen âge,” he claimed that, “the art of the
Middle Ages in its entirety was at that moment regaining possession of France,
its ancient and glorious homeland.”70 In 1845, he listed 49 new buildings in
modern Gothic; in 1852, 200.71
The approval of Gau’s Sainte-Clotilde was thus only one in a long series
of compliant decisions, and this leniency was a growing cause for concern in
certain circles, including among members of the Conseil.72 There had never
been any substantial Neo-Gothic churches constructed in the capital with
the exception of the Anglican church on rue d’Aguesseau, designed by the
architect Simon Dahlstein for the British Embassy around 1834.73 SainteClotilde, by its size and location in Paris, would naturally trigger strong
reactions (Fig. 4.7). This important new parish church was to be built in
the aristocratic Quartier Saint-Germain. No doubt the choice of style was
influenced by the siting in this most Catholic district. The naming of the
church as well as details of its iconographic program hint at the larger cult
of Queen Clotilde, wife of Clovis, a symbol of France’s Catholic origins dear
to ultramontanists. The royal family tacitly approved the project, though the
precise motivations for the Comte de Rambuteau’s political maneuvering
to get the project approved remained to be clarified. The project certainly
attracted a lot of attention: the drawings exhibited at the Hôtel de Ville drew
crowds of visitors, just as would later the actual construction on Place de
Bellechasse. Despite its unconvincing Neo-Gothic design, it signaled the end,
in Paris, of a consistent line of investigation into the basilican church form
that was started in the first quarter of the century by Jean-François-Thérèse
Chalgrin, Étienne Godde, Louis-Hippolyte Lebas, Jean-Nicolas Huyot, and
Jacob-Ignaz Hittorf. From then on, all experiments in church architecture in
France would be based on medieval precedents, whether drawn from the
Romanesque or Gothic period.
Whether triggered by Sainte-Clotilde or by the mounting menace of
Gothic revivalism in France is unclear. However, the Académie des BeauxArts published a manifesto condemning modern Gothic, which was an
extraordinary interference in artistic debates by the normally impassive
institution.74 The manifesto was a synthetic summary of presentations and
discussions that transpired over nine successive Saturday meetings, to
answer questions on the use of Gothic for modern churches brought to the
table on February 21, 1846 by Auguste Caristie (who also sat on the Conseil
des bâtiments civils). The report, written by Secrétaire perpétuel Désiré RaoulRochette, was subsequently distributed to all the academies, sent to the
Ministère de l’Intérieur, published separately as a pamphlet, and reproduced
4.7
Franz Christian Gau. Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde,
Paris. 1846–1857. Photo by the author
148 architecture and the historical imagination
in at least three different journals.75 It generated intense reactions, a complete
survey of which remains to be done, but a few stand out.
Viollet-le-Duc wrote the leading reply for the Gothic camp, a long piece
entitled “Du style gothique au XIXe siècle,” published in Annales.76 At the
same time, and posing a very similar argument, Lassus wrote a shorter and
tamer article published, thanks to César Daly, in the pages of the Fourierist
newspaper La démocratie pacifique and republished a month later in the
Moniteur des arts.77 Daly himself published a short commentary in the Revue
générale de l’architecture et des travaux publics, welcoming the controversy as an
opportunity for an open debate between the conservatives and progressive
youth.78 A year later, he would take a position against the revivalists.
Republican art critic Gabriel Laviron wrote a long piece in 1846 addressing
both Raoul-Rochette’s report and Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus’s responses in the
prominent (if short-lived) journal La revue nouvelle.79 Laviron will expand his
thesis in an interesting article in Pierre Leroux’s Revue indépendante the next
year. Antiquarians from the provinces also joined the fray, such as Georges
de Villers and Alphonse Le Falguais writing in Le Bulletin monumental.80 Even
the clergy had a say: Abbé François-Michel Pascal wrote an interesting piece
titled “Sur l’engouement pour le style du moyen âge,” in Abbé Jacques-Paul
Migne’s religious newspaper, La Voix de la Vérité. Many architects and critics
joined the debate obliquely, slipping remarks into articles devoted to other
topics. Léon Vaudoyer continued his attacks on Gothic revivalism, with
Lenoir in their “Études d’architecture en France” published in Le Magasin
pittoresque, and by himself in another of Édouard Charton’s journals, Patria,
in which he articulated succinctly his own definition of a French national
architectural style. Raoul-Rochette would pick up his pen again to write for
the Journal des savants, in March 1847, taking advantage of a review of Vitet’s
monograph on the Cathedral of Notre-Dame at Noyon to rearticulate his
position on the Gothic. Daly would take a position against the revivalists in
1847, as would Vitet. We can even detect a faint echo of the controversy in
Émile Burnouf’s important “Le Parthénon,” published in the Revue des Deux
Mondes in December 1847. The list of reactions goes on,81 the majority—albeit
not among architects—in support of the Gothic Revival. There was even a
counter-proposal for a cast iron church to replace Gau’s design.82 In all the
cases noted, the reactions were prompted by the Académie’s report rather
than the project for Sainte-Clotilde.
The report drafted by Raoul-Rochette was a short document of carefully
negotiated conservative academism and contemporary interests.83 It opened
with several long paragraphs in praise of the old Gothic churches of France,
which “please the imagination” and powerfully “act upon the senses.” The
Académie recognized that Gothic churches should be respectfully preserved
“for as long as the language and genius of France continues to live.”84 Such
concession to Gothic was necessary, argued Viollet-le-Duc in his reply, because
the Académie was obliged to tread carefully over a subject that enjoyed
such wide popularity among the general public. But he also noted that the
reviving the gothic 149
report was “the product of so many diverse opinions” that the “Secrétaire
perpétuel, despite all the dexterity of his talent, could not avoid enigma and
contradictions.”85 Viollet-le-Duc was correct in observing that the Académie
was not of one voice. If all the formal papers read at the Académie argued
against modern Gothic, a vote held on the question on April 4, 1846 was not
unanimous. The proceedings did not specify the exact count, but rumours
circulated that 22 members of the Académie voted against the Gothic, while
18 held to the principle of liberty in the arts.
Raoul-Rochette’s report, however, was not so inconsistent as Viollet-leDuc claimed. The Académie did acknowledge that the Gothic could generate
strong emotions, but in the way of a theatrical stage set. Repeating the usual
criticism, it described the Gothic nave as a mere prop held up through
the artifice of a complicated scaffolding of buttresses that denatured the
architecture. It was thus pure fantasy: one may well be allowed to build an
occasional Gothic church or castle, conceded Raoul-Rochette, but only “par
caprice ou par amusement.”86 For Viollet-le-Duc, who had spent so much time
describing the economy and efficiency of Gothic structures, the reproach
was absurd. But the Académie was not so concerned about the reality of
construction, even though it did argue at times that Gothic buildings suffered
from faulty construction, as in its “verisimilitude” following principles set
long ago by Jacques-François Blondel and more recently, Quatremère de
Quincy.
Essentially, Raoul-Rochette’s report opposed Gothic to classical
architecture by pitting the notion of “the copy” against the classical
concept of “imitation,” an argument entirely drawn from the writings of
Quatremère de Quincy. Gothic being a singular curiosity, an historical
bizarrerie devoid of any rational generating principle, it can only be
copied. Classical architecture, in contrast, is based on nature, following
the principle of truthful imitation inspired by Greek sculpture. It therefore
has a universality that makes it available to rational adaptation “to the
conventions of all societies and the needs of all periods.”87 Viollet-le-Duc
and others would, of course, lose no time in mocking the assertion of
such retardataire concepts. If the principle of the imitation of nature was
valid, argued Viollet-le-Duc in his reply, then a daguerreotype would be
preferable to a painting by Raphael. Laviron, for his part, would cut to the
chase even faster: copy or imitation, he asks, what’s the difference? What
neither Viollet-le-Duc and Laviron were obviously not willing to accept
was the authority of classical norms and rules, the sine qua non condition
for the validity of the traditional concept of imitation.
Raoul-Rochette’s report was actually vague in its definition of imitation,
because they took that definition for granted and perhaps also because they
sensed that the concept was getting increasingly difficult to defend. The
influence of Cousinian eclecticism can certainly be felt in Raoul-Rochette’s
report. Thus, instead of opposing the eternal norms and rules of classicism
to the bizarrerie gothique, Raoul-Rochette attacked revivalism on the basis
150 architecture and the historical imagination
of its turn away from the modern world. In a passage picked out by many
commentators, the Académie made a surprising gesture toward modernity:
[F]or the arts, as for societies, there is only one natural and legitimate way to proceed;
it is to be of their time, it is to live by the ideas of their century; it is to appropriate
all the elements of the civilization that is at their disposal; it is to create works that
belong to them, by gathering from the past, by choosing in the present all that can
serve their purpose. … [creating church monuments] that responds to the needs of
modern worship, and that are stamped with the character of Christianity and the
genius of our society.88
To strongly emphasize the need “to be of one’s time” and “to live by the
idea of one’s century” is obviously at odds with the Académie’s traditional
commitment to classical art and erudition. For Laviron, such a statement
was to be understood as merely rhetorical. For Viollet-le-Duc, it was a
desperate move to avoid having to deal with the Gothic. “You renounce to
[the principle of] unity,” declared Viollet-le-Duc, “in order to save the vaisseau
de l’Académie.”89 Viollet-le-Duc may not have been entirely off the mark. The
Académie’s statement reflected the juste milieu attitude typical of the July
Monarchy’s official position on the arts, whereby a certain eclecticism was
tolerated to accommodate an increasingly complex bourgeois society.
Viollet-le-Duc’s reaction, in contrast, was totally intransigent. Against any
form of eclecticism (whether the Académie’s or Fortoul’s), he demanded an
uncompromising unity of style. Refusing the architect’s capacity to create a
new architecture (“as if one can create an art!” he exclaimed),90 Viollet-le-Duc
articulated one of the century’s most essentializing defenses of revivalism
ever issued in France. For him, the principle of unity demanded that the
modern architect adopt a style already fully developed, adhering religiously
to its principle: “In order to raise anything, wouldn’t it be a simple guérite, one
requires a fully mature art [un art arrêté], coordinated by a system subjected to
insuperable principles and rules.”91
Viollet-le-Duc’s text is a truly sententious declamation. The revival of
Gothic is not presented as a choice, but as a quasi-providential turn of events.
I quote at length from “De l’art gothique au XIXe siècle” to illustrate the tone
of his conviction, which could be compared in intensity with A. W. N. Pugin’s
Contrasts:
The truth is coming out, and only those having some vested interest in not seeing it
will try to turn away from it. Men of good faith will join together, and then all the
minor misgivings that kept the various schools separate will disappear. … Whatever
you [members of the Académie] may say, the people will always feel better baptized,
or better married in a Gothic church than in a Roman basilica. No, gentlemen, you
will not be able to stop the incoming tide of opinion that continually rises; the dike
that you are building to oppose it will only cause it to overflow more violently, more
rapidly, and more invasively. … We pursue our route, because we are convinced;
because, if genius is not with us (it is a companion difficult to encounter), at least
we walk side by side with common sense. We are and we will be putting up French
churches of the thirteenth century, because it makes us indignant to see, in France,
reviving the gothic 151
[religious] worship bent to suit monumental arrangements plagiarized from
Antiquity or from the Italian Middle Ages; … because, finally, we are disgusted to
search to no avail through theories, at times absolute, at times rational, and to be
tossed around from the Romans to the Renaissance, and from the Greeks to the late
Empire. You have not taken the movement seriously, gentlemen; you thought of us
as children playing with dolls, and whom, “par caprices ou par amusement,” wanted
to build castles or Gothic churches. No, gentlemen, either give us a logical ART,
beautiful in its form, or let us regain the only one that has united to the greatest
degree these two qualities, at home, on our soil, when it hasn’t been mutilated “by
ignorance or barbarism.” We do not need vague theories; we need an art adulte. … Let
us return to our art, gentlemen, rather than try to plunge us back into disorder and
anarchy, … give us a logical and complete art that fulfils the conditions of unity that
modern society calls for. …You will start by getting copies; that is inevitable, that is
even necessary to get acquainted with all the resources of Gothic architecture. We will
even admit that you will get bad copies (we are not in excess of one or two more bad
monuments); but the principle being good, the type art inexhaustible in its teachings,
artists will soon have understood its meaning; their copies will then become
intelligent, reasoned, and finally our national architecture, always maintaining
its unity, its all-French root, will be able to perfect itself just like our language has
already done.92
The impassioned plea is noteworthy by its messianic accent: the return to
Gothic is presented as a destiny, the inevitable reclaiming of a natural (native)
and healthy creativity that will liberate the modern artist from chaos and
anarchy. Such providentialist posture was widespread at the times, a social
messianism that would explode into the open on the barricades of 1848. The
utopian attitude of Viollet-le-Duc lies not only in his tone, but in his desire
to “leap” back into unity, into what he calls an art adulte. Only once within
that total art form—after passing the initiatory threshold of making a few
awkward copies—will the artist be able to regain spontaneity. Liquidating the
need for abstract speculations, the artist will simply “practice” the adopted
language as his native tongue.
Revivalism versus Modernity
The painter and art critic Gabriel Laviron, unquestionably the most republican
and anti-academic voice in the Gothic controversy,93 would react forcefully
against Viollet-le-Duc’s revivalism. To turn back to Gothic architecture did
nothing, according to him, to move the discussion beyond “the imitation of
old stuff [l’imitation des vieilleries]”94 which plagued all of the arts. Juxtaposing
the Académie’s manifesto with both Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc’s replies,
Laviron did not hide his astonishment at the fact that such prominent
members of the anti-academic faction—“they who are so well made for the
free and independent ways of the true artists”95—restricted the debate on the
issue of what ought to be copied, Gothic or classic. It was nothing short of
a “néo-gothicisme académique,”96 he wrote. Laviron singled out Viollet-le-Duc,
who “more than anyone should know that the essential function of the artist
152 architecture and the historical imagination
is to create, and that the first quality, the first merit of a work of art is precisely
its originality.”97 Like Lenoir and Vaudoyer before him, Laviron attributes
Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus’s refusal to embrace modernity to their fanaticism
for the Gothic.98 Their so-called conservatism was made particularly salient
in contrast to Laviron’s own position. Significantly titled “L’architecture
contemporaine,” Laviron’s article was probably the most straightforward call
for a new architecture issued in France at the time, entirely free from stylistic
a priori: “A monument to be raised, he wrote, is a problem to be solved; to
study an architectural project is to draw out an unknown. The end purpose,
the materials, the sum of money available, local circumstances, necessities of
all kinds are the givens of the problem: the monument itself is the term X, the
unknown, which is the artist’s function to determine.”99 Even the eclecticism
of Vaudoyer is sentenced to the pit of revivalism. “One wanted to faire de
l’Étrusque, de la Renaissance ou du Gothique and an architectural masquerade
came out of it,” wrote Laviron in his ambitious article “L’architecture de
l’avenir” of 1847, adding “but the carnival cannot last eternally, and we must
hope that it soon divests itself of these extravagant costumes and dons more
appropriate forms.”100
Despite his appeal to a mathematical logic, Laviron is not proposing
an engineer’s solution. On the contrary, he is motivated by some radical
version of Cousinian idealism, identifying “the essential function of art
as the manifestation of nature’s ‘primordial types’.”101 (“The truth of art,”
insists Laviron, “is superior to the truth of nature, it is more essentially
true, since it is the absolute truth.”102) Laviron’s realism should thus be
conceived as a means: “Objective truth is only the means and not the aim
of art.”103 In wrestling “corps à corps” with nature (or with the modern
conditions, in the case of architecture), the artist can draw out, as it were,
the primordial types.
César Daly and his ever more influential Revue générale de l’architecture
et des travaux publics would join the debate in 1847 to hammer in the same
type of criticism as Laviron. From its launch in 1840, Daly’s journal had been
very sympathetic to the Gothic cause, even welcoming articles by Didron
until the latter created his own mouthpiece in 1844. Cordial relations were
kept between the editors of Annales and Revue générale, the two main organs
of anti-academic architectural polemics in France. But following the 1846
controversy, positions were realigned. In the first 1847 issue of the Revue
générale, Daly published a long letter from the architect Louis Gounod, a
pupil of Huyot, who severely criticized Didron’s dogmatism and the copyist
attitude of the Gothic revivalists.104 Daly endorsed the criticism. In a significant
footnote where he elaborated on the linguistic analogy proposed by Gounod,
he emphasized the necessity “to create new expressions, new words in relation
to the evolution of the century.”105 In 1847, he published subsequent articles
against the revivalists, such as “De la liberté dans l’art—À Monsieur Ludovic
Vitet”106 or “La vérité ou la guerre, choisissez.”107 He wrote in “De la liberté
dans l’art” that:
reviving the gothic 153
archaeology … is rejuvenation without the Fountain of Youth; a rejuvenation destined
to make us regress from manhood, which we just attained, back to the first days of
our childhood. … The art of the nineteenth century will be formed as were the great
cathedrals of the Middle Ages, with contributions from all Christian nations. Each
epoch will add its stone to the new work [l’œuvre nouvelle]; but from the harmonious
combination of materials will emerge an unknown power, absent from each element
considered in isolation. … Today, we must decide between the liberty and the
servitude of art, between the genius who searches, who creates, and the talent that
reproduces, that copies, between a birth and a resurrection.108
Later, in 1856, Daly described the 1847 rupture with the Gothic camp as
a watershed moment that initiated a second, “anti-revivalist” phase in
the development of the Revue générale, and which came from the will to
concentrate on the need for reform and the call for a new architecture.109 In
the period just preceding the revolution of 1848, the sense that the artist had to
tap into the vital forces shaping society was indeed becoming paramount. In
the 1849 issue of the Revue générale, Daly would publish a scathing caricature
titled “L’architecture contemporaine” drawn by the young architect Victor
Ruprich-Robert, a disciple of Simon-Claude Constant-Dufeux. Presented as
a double-page engraving, it shows, on the left, the revivalists of both classical
and Gothic camps—the “artistes d’outre tombe”—as a bunch of old blindfolded
men stumbling and lagging behind the evolutionary line. In contrast, on the
right appears the figure of “L’art nouveau” sitting majestically on a locomotive
with three smaller effigies representing architecture, painting, and sculpture.
The locomotive, labeled “Le progrès,” with its wheels bearing the inscriptions
“Le beau, le vrai, l’utile,” is moving toward the future symbolized by a rising
sun. It was a fitting representation of Daly and Constant-Dufeux’s social
utopianism, inspired by the teaching of Charles Fourier. Daly still cultivated a
historicist understanding of artistic and social development, a dimension well
emphasized in Ruprich-Robert’s caricature by the geological layers of the older
art forms shown below the figure of “L’art nouveau,” but that “development”
was now ripe for radical renewal. The architects he celebrated were the
Romantics of the first generation: Duban, Constant-Dufeux, and above all,
Labrouste, who was just completing the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève.
Daly’s article, “De la liberté dans l’art,” was a preamble to the publication
of a speech by Vitet in which this prominent member of the Conseil d’État
had officially taken a position against the revival of the Gothic. It was a
big blow for the revivalists, as Vitet was one of the leading figures of the
restoration movement of the July Monarchy, president of the Commission
des monuments historiques, and among the earliest and most respected
students of medieval architecture. Like Laviron, Vitet warned that an
exclusive attachment to the Gothic was as harmful to architecture as the
dogmatic classicism of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In contrast, Violletle-Duc’s “Du style gothique au XIXe siècle” of 1846 ended with an outright
apologia for academic conservatism: “If the thirteenth century had founded
the Académie, our national art would not have been lost. Strict guardian of the
154 architecture and the historical imagination
ancient types, the Académie would have prevented the beautiful architecture
of Saint-Louis from being altered.”110 Even more curious to read in a period
brimming with the need for change was Viollet-le-Duc’s refusal to admit
that the nineteenth century was a new era: “In order to create a new art, you
need a new civilization, and this is not our case.”111 To be sure, Viollet-le-Duc
meant the term “civilization” in a broad sense, since for Neo-Catholics such
as Buchez, “modern civilization has emerged entirely from the Gospel,”112 but
in the context of 1846, the statement appeared to ignore overwhelming social
changes.
What perhaps Lenoir, Vaudoyer, Laviron, Daly, and Vitet did not envision
in 1847 was that there is more than one way to be modern. Welcoming
modernization and a culture of progress is only one of its configurations,
since the term “modern” not only designates the acceleration of time, it also
speaks of its rupture. Much of the force of modern art lies in the conviction
that the concept of man in harmony with himself has become spurious.113
Viollet-le-Duc and the Gothic revivalists had a keen sense of modernity’s inner
dichotomy, understanding that, paradoxically, a breach in time was necessary
to answer to the Romantic aspiration for unity. For them, architecture did
not simply mirror the (modern) world, it was itself an intervention within
that modern reality, aimed at recovering the unity of life associated with an
organic conception of the nation. Viollet-le-Duc held neither a reassured belief
in the permanence of tradition, along the lines of the official academic stance,
nor faith in any notion of continuous progress, along the lines of the first
generation of Romantic architects. He desired nothing less than a “historical
correction,” a clear case of modern displacement if there ever was one.
Such a call for a break within historical development was in contrast to all
current trends in Parisian architectural circles. As we have seen already, the
earlier generation of Romantics had joined Pierre Leroux and Jean Reynaud
in rejecting the idea, dear to early Saint-Simonians and Neo-Catholics, of a
discontinuous history.114 Indeed, by the early 1830s, not only Leroux, but
Saint-Simonians Prosper Enfantin and Armand Bazard had adopted the
more liberal and secular notion of “progrès continu.” Members of the Annales
group were thus among the few who, with Buchez and the Neo-Catholics,
still honored the Maistrian loi du sacrifice or the Saint-Simonian loi d’alternance
that made periods of crisis a necessity within the historical process. A role was
attributed to revolution in the economy of historical development.115
Such desire for rupture was well expressed in one of Laviron’s astute
comments on Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus’s revivalism: “[T]o want to be a
Gothic architect in the nineteenth century by skipping over the Renaissance,”
wrote Laviron, “is to want to be one’s own grandfather.”116 The remark
identifies in a nutshell what distinguished Viollet-le-Duc’s revivalism from
the Académie’s Neoclassicism, given that both aspired to the unity of a style.
Even if Viollet-le-Duc insisted on drawing only from the best period of Gothic
art, he was not looking for the emulation of a set of exemplary and canonic
models; he sought to become Gothic again, asking “Why shouldn’t we try to be
reviving the gothic 155
original by ‘assimilating ourselves, as it were’ … to French art of the thirteenth
century?”117 He wished to be absorbed entirely, assimilated, into the historical
period. To end the current period of stylistic confusion, Viollet-le-Duc
demanded the adoption of a fully developed art form, whereas Lenoir and
Vaudoyer sought an architecture in the process of “development.” Violletle-Duc’s aim was to end a period of unstable identity in order to acquire the
stability characteristic of adulthood. The claim that one feels “better baptized
and better married” in a Gothic church only adds resonance to the idea of a
rite of passage. His historical revivalism functions as a sort of incorporation,
as we have seen described by Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok in Chapter
1: a process destined to magically transmute a fragmented reality into unity.
Viollet-le-Duc may have never truly consciously theorized his complex
relation to the Middle Ages, but with “Du style gothique au XIXe siècle,” he at
least revealed the true substance of his search. By regressing to an earlier age,
Viollet-le-Duc substitutes hallucinatory fulfillment for the “normal” process
of assimilating reality as Lenoir and Vaudoyer proposed.
Notes
1 The list of members of the Société d’archéologie nationale founded by Didron
in June 1848 gives an approximate idea of the men brought together around
the journal Annales archéologiques, hereafter AA, though not all of them were as
obsessively committed to its goals as its president Didron: archaeologists LéonNicolas Godard, Baron Ferdinand de Guilhermy, Arthur Martin, Charles Cahier,
Louis Petit de Julleville, Edmond du Sommerard, and Comte Félix-Joseph de
Verneilh; architects Jean-Baptiste Lassus, Émile Boeswillwald, Louis Sureda,
Paul Abadie, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Victor-Marie-Charles RuprichRobert, Alexandre-Albert Lenoir, Jules-Charles-Joseph de Mérindol, and Eugène
Millet; sculptors Louis-Auguste Deligand, Adolph-Victor Geoffroy-Dechaume,
François-Michel Pascal, Victor-Joseph Pyanet, François Christophe Armand
Toussaint; painters Alexandre-Dominique Denuelle, Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin,
Auguste-Louis-Charles Ledoux, Louis-Charles-Auguste Steinheil; musicians
Félix-Jacques-Alfred Clément, Jean-Louis-Félix Danjou, Louis-Simon Fanart, and
Charles-Edmond-Henri de Coussemaker; draftsmen Michel-Charles Fichot, Victor
Petit, and Léon Gaucherel; engravers Auguste-Alexandre and Claude-NicolasEugène Guillaumot, and Olivier-Émile Ollivier. See Didron, “Statuts de la Société
d’archéologie nationale fondée à Paris en janvier 1848,” AA 8 (1848): 241.
2 Alphonse-Napoléon Didron, “Introduction,”AA 1 (1844): 4.
3 “Outre que nous sommes soumis à cette grande loi du christianisme, la
civilisation moderne est toute basée sur l’Évangile, ” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la
construction des édifices religieux en France depuis le commencement du
christianisme jusqu’au XVIe siècle,” AA 3 (1845): 328.
4 Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 3 (1846): 266.
5 I consulted Jean Rondelet, Traité théorique et pratique de l’art de bâtir, 6th ed.
(Paris: M. A. Rondelet, architecte, 1830), vol. 1, xx. See Robin Middleton and
Marie-Noëlle Baudouin-Matuszek, Jean Rondelet. The Architect as Technician (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 230–232.
156 architecture and the historical imagination
6 Émile Mâle, L’art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France (1898) (Paris: Librairie Armand
Colin, 1958), 12, 15 and 17.
7 See S. H. “Réponse de M. Didron à la critique de son Histoire de Dieu avec une
réplique exposant la suite de ses aberrations,” Annales de philosophie chrétienne 10
(1844): 66.
8 S. H. “De quelques aberrations de M. Didron,” Annales de philosophie chrétienne 9
(1844): 387.
9 See Martin Bressani, “Science, histoire et archéologie. Sources et généalogie de la
pensée organiciste de Viollet-le-Duc,” PhD diss., Université de Paris-Sorbonne,
1997, Section B.
10 Alphonse-Napoléon Didron, Iconographie chrétienne. Histoire de Dieu (Paris:
Imprimerie royale, 1843), xvii–xviii, or 19–20, depending on the edition.
11 Didron, Iconographie chrétienne. Histoire de Dieu, 3 or 27, depending on the
edition.
12 Alphonse-Napoléon Didron, “Introduction,” AA 8 (1848): 106.
13 See “Littérature. Poésie du moyen âge,” in L’Européen 2 (June 30, 1832): 55–58.
The anonymous article is presented by Buchez as the first in a series by a “man
of a profound erudition who has made a special study of the poetical works of
the Middle Ages.” This can only be Louis-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, immediate
neighbor and friend of Dr. Ulysse Trélat. It should be noted, however, that the
content of this article on the fabliaux has nothing to do with Buchez’s doctrine.
14 For a more thorough discussion of L’Institut historique, see Bressani, “Science,
histoire et archéologie. Sources et généalogie de la pensée organiciste de Violletle-Duc,” 153–168. Historian François-André Isambert claimed that the first
congress held by the Institut in 1835 was the most spectacular offensive of the
Bucheziens against the bourgeois regime of Louis-Philippe. See his Buchez ou
l’âge théologique de la sociologie (Paris: Éditions Cujas, 1967), 68.
15 Didron is not included in the original list of members, but his participation in
the regular meetings of the Institut is clear from the Journal de l’Institut historique
3 (1835), 175. For his participation in the 1835 congress, see “Onzième séance,”
in Congrès historique européen—Discours et compte-rendu des séances (Paris: Krabbe,
1836), 119–145. Later proceedings generate some confusion, as they have been
published in various forms under the same title.
16 See, for instance, the letter from Didron to Jean-Baptiste Lassus, August 1838,
published in an appendix to Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857 (Paris: Arts
et métiers graphiques, 1980), 202.
17 L’Univers, purchased by Comte Charles-Forbes de Montalembert around 1838,
was a resolutely liberal Catholic newspaper until it was taken over by Louis
Veuillot after 1840. It then became uncompromisingly ultramontanist. During
Comte de Montalembert’s tenure, an extensive and very positive review of
Buchez’s Essai d’un traité complet de philosophie written by one of his collaborators,
Abbé Pierre-Célestin Roux-Lavergne, was published; see L’Univers, March 20,
1839, cols. 7183–7186.
18 “Conformité de goûts, un charmant édifice à restaurer, sujet inépuisable
d’études, ce sont là des bonheurs qui laissent une impression brillante sur les
première pages de la vie. M. Duban nous traitait plutôt comme des confrères
que comme des subordonnés. Notre agence se composait seulement de Lassus,
de Sureda, aujourd’hui architecte de la Reine d’Espagne, et de moi. Nos heures
reviving the gothic 157
de travail étaient les meilleurs moments de notre journée. Dans notre bureau,
logé dans un méchant comble du porche, chacun de nous arrivait gaiement et ne
partait qu’en promettant de revenir le lendemain de bonne heure. Je vois encore
le petit café borgne où nous déjeunions en face de notre édifice chéri, le couvant
des yeux ; nous l’imaginions restauré, brillant comme il l’est aujourd’hui, à
travers ses misères et ses mutilations. De nous trois, Lassus était l’aîné, peut-être
était-il le plus ambitieux. Pour moi, il me semblait que toute la vie pouvait être
circonscrite dans cette cour solitaire, sous les contre-forts noircis de la SainteChapelle,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Nécrologie. M. Lassus,” Encyclopédie d’architecture 7
(1857): col. 114–115.
19 “Mon pauvre coeur qui toujours inquiet, toujours comme poursuivi par un
remord … et qui souffre de tout,” Viollet-le-Duc to his wife Elisabeth, July 9,
1841, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1835–47,” doc. 46.
20 “Je sens un besoin de repos invincible, et le repos me fatigue plus que le travail
le plus acharné. J’ai quelquefois peur de devenir fou tant je me sens l’esprit
tiraillé par mille choses différentes. … Je suis tellement seul,” Viollet-le-Duc
to his wife Elisabeth, August 11, 1841, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports,
1835–47,” doc. 50.
21 “Je ne me trouve réellement bien que dans ma vieille Sainte-Chapelle, là tout
me plait, tout se fait comme je l’entends, tout marche régulièrement et sans
efforts, il n’y a que des gens adroits, actifs, soumis et travailleurs,” Viollet-le-Duc
to his wife Elisabeth, July 3, 1841, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1835–47,”
doc. 45.
22 Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Paris, September 2, 1836, LI,
133–135. He notes that his description was produced by “recalling the characters
who surround me in Paris.”
23 The Siècle, in 1837, defines “Tout-Paris” as a “sacred batallion” of four or five
hundred people, comprising dandies, writers, and merveilleuses. Balzac, in La
Muse du département, speaks of “2,000 persons who believe themselves to be all
of Paris.” Comte Rodolphe Apponyi, in 1838, goes up to 3,000. See Anne MartinFugier, La vie élégante ou la formation du Tout-Paris: 1815–1848 (Paris: Fayard,
1990), 96.
24 “Pauvre, petite, naissante, mais entêtée, consciencieuse, inflexible, … elle combat
toujours sourdement, et quelquefois sur la place publique,” Viollet-le-Duc to his
father Emmanuel-Louis, Pisa, September 2, 1836, LI, 134.
25 See Bruce Tolley, “The ‘cénacle’ of Balzac’s Illusions perdues,” French Studies 15
(1961): 324–337.
26 Sainte-Beuve, quoted in Paul Bénichou, Le temps des prophètes: doctrines de l’âge
romantique (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), 190.
27 See Jean-Michel Leniaud, Saint-Denis de 1760 à nos jours (Paris: GallimardJulliard, 1996).
28 Eugène-Louis Viollet-le-Duc, “Les monuments parisiens et leurs amis,”
Encyclopédie d’architecture 1, 4th ser. (1888–1889): 105.
29 See Katherine Fischer Taylor, “The Palais de Justice of Paris: Modernization,
Historical Self-Consciousness, and their Prehistory in French Institutional
Architecture (1835–1869),” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1989, 701–723; see
also Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 109–113.
30 Taylor, “The Palais de Justice of Paris,” 704.
158 architecture and the historical imagination
31 Taylor, “The Palais de justice of Paris,” 894.
32 Taylor, “The Palais de justice of Paris,” 900, n. 11.
33 Alexandre-Albert Lenoir and Léon Vaudoyer, “Études d’architecture en France,
ou notions relatives à l’âge et au style des monuments élevés à différentes
époques de notre histoire,” Le Magasin Pittoresque 12 (1844): 261.
34 Lenoir and Vaudoyer, “Études d’architecture en France,” 262.
35 Lenoir and Vaudoyer, “Études d’architecture en France,” 262.
36 Lenoir and Vaudoyer, “Études d’architecture en France,” 261.
37 Jean-Baptiste Lassus, “De l’art et de l’archéologie,” AA 2 (1845): 69–77, 197–205
and 329–335; and Viollet-le-Duc, “De l’art étranger et de l’art national,” AA 2
(1845): 303–308.
38 Pierre Leroux, “Preface—De la doctrine du progrès continu,” Revue
encyclopédique 60 (October–December 1833): XXVIII.
39 Leroux, “Preface—De la doctrine du progrès continu,” XXXVIII.
40 Leroux, “Preface—De la doctrine du progrès continu,” XLXIX.
41 Lenoir and Vaudoyer, “Études d’architecture en France,” 261.
42 Jules Michelet, “La passion comme principe d’art au moyen âge” (1833), Oeuvres
complètes, ed. Paul Viallaneix, 22 vols. (Paris: Flammarion, 1974), vol. 4, 722.
43 Lenoir and Vaudoyer, “Études d’architecture en France,” 262.
44 Hippolyte Fortoul, “De l’architecture curviligne,” De l’art en allemagne (Paris:
Labitte, 1841–1842), vol. 2, 319. The chapter was published separately in La revue
indépendante in 1841.
45 Fortoul, “De l’architecture curviligne,” 323.
46 Fortoul, “De l’architecture curviligne,” 316.
47 Fortoul, “De l’architecture curviligne,” 315.
48 Lenoir and Vaudoyer, “Études d’architecture en France,“ 261.
49 Lenoir and Vaudoyer, “Études d’architecture en France,“ 262.
50 Ph. H., “Beaux-Arts. Restauration et décoration des monuments publics. La
Sainte-Chapelle,” Le National, Novembre 27, 1849, unpaged.
51 “Il est encore beaucoup de gens, fort savants d’ailleurs, qui, lorsqu’on leur parle
d’architecture gothique, voient surgir autour d’eux des milliers de clochetons,
des dentelles de pierres (pour nous servir d’une expression en vogue), des fuseaux
innombrables de colonettes déliées, … des myriades de diablotins grimaçants,
des feuillages luxuriants et mêlés de scènes au moins grotesques, …” Viollet-leDuc, “De l’art étranger et de l’art national,” 304.
52 “Des romans mêlés à des traité de science, des chapitres d’histoire terminés par
des chansons,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De l’art étranger et de l’art national,” 303.
53 Viollet-le-Duc,” “De l’art étranger et de l’art national,” 305.
54 Barry Bergdoll, Léon Vaudoyer: Historicism in the Age of Industry (Cambridge,
Mass.: The MIT Press, 1994), 183.
55 Lenoir and Vaudoyer, “Études d’architecture en France,” 262.
reviving the gothic 159
56 Quoted by Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 203.
57 “Nouvelle sacristie de Notre-Dame de Paris,” Le Magasin pittoresque 18
(November 1850): 362.
58 “L’archéologie, longtemps regardée comme une étude purement spéculative …,
l’archéologie fut au contraire la première à former des praticiens, …” Viollet-leDuc, “De l’art étranger et de l’art national,” 305.
59 John Jacobus, “The Architecture of Viollet-le-Duc,” PhD diss., Yale University,
1956, 119.
60 Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1958)
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), 162.
61 Françoise Boudon, “Viollet-le-Duc et l’architecture urbaine: une vision nouvelle
de la mouluration,”Actes du colloque international Viollet-le-Duc Paris 1980, ed.
Pierre-Marie Auzas (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1982), 63–72.
62 “Aussi les quatres cinquièmes des maisons, à Paris, sont bâties par des
maîtres-maçons, et s’il nous reste une bien faible trace de l’architecture
nationale, c’est encore là qu’on la retrouve. Dispositions hardies, élégantes
quelquefois, presque toujours subordonnées aux besoins et au bon sens.
… Le système de construction [des maisons particulières des XIIIe et XIVe
siècles] pourrait être appliqué à nos besoins actuels, et se soumettre aux
plus médiocres fortunes. C’est un art, nous ne cessons de le répéter, et un
art n’est tel que quand il est fait pour tout le monde,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la
construction,” AA 4 (1846): 282.
63 “En prenant, sans plus de façons, un art fait pour nous et à notre taille, sans
influences extérieures,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De l’art étranger et de l’art national,”
308.
64 The literature never mentions the approval on August 17, 1846, dwelling instead
on the previous meeting of March 16, 1846, when there was much discussion
on the issue. It remains unclear whether the Conseil was forced into approval
by the pressures put on them by the Comte de Rambuteau. See Archives
Nationales, F/21/2542/10.
65 In the rather vast literature on Sainte-Clotilde, the most thorough account is
by Mario Kramp, “‘Style Gautique’, Zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich.
Der architect Franz Christian Gau (1789–1853), Der Kölner Dombau und der
Beginn der Neugotik in Paris,” Kölner Domblatt 60 (1995): 131–218. There is a
good summary by Robin Middleton in Middleton and Watkin, Neoclassical and
19th Century Architecture (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1980), 356–358. See
also Adeline Falières-Lamy, “La basilique Sainte-Clotilde-Sainte-Valère à Paris.
Architecture et sculpture,” Paris et Île-de-France 40 (1989), 207–255.
66 With Jean Vatout as president, the following men comprised the Conseil des
bâtiments civils in 1846: Hubert Rohault de Fleury, Jean-Jacques-Marie Huvé,
Auguste Caristie, Léon-Marie-Dieudonné Biet, Achille Leclere, Guillaume-Abel
Blouet, Charles-Pierre Gourlier, François-Tranquille Gauché, Léon Vaudoyer,
Jean-Louis Provost, Auguste-Joseph Pellechet, Baron Taylor, Edme-Jean-Louis
Grillon, Prosper Mérimée, Jacques-Félix Duban, Ludovic Vitet. According to
Didron, the first 11 (excluding Vatout) on that list were enemies of the Gothic,
“L’église de la place Belle-Chasse, à Paris,” AA 4 (1846): 258.
67 See Falières-Lamy, “La basilique Sainte-Clotilde-Sainte-Valère,” 215, and
Middleton and Watkin, Neoclassical and 19th Century Architecture, 358.
160 architecture and the historical imagination
68 See, for instance, in their meeting of March 16, 1846; ANF F/21/2542/10 fol. 42 v.
The principle was often repeated in their discussions on Sainte-Clotilde.
69 Didron, “Renaissance du moyen âge,” AA 6 (1847): 11.
70 Didron, “Renaissance du moyen âge,” 2.
71 See Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus 1807–1857, 124.
72 If the Conseil des bâtiments civils had approved the project in April 1846,
it nonetheless recommended a great number of revisions. These demands
were put aside as the Ministre de l’Interièur authorized the préfet de la Seine to
send the project for tender in September 1846 per Gau’s design. See Didron’s
disparaging comments in AA 5 (September 1846): 187.
73 In the capital, there were, of course, several smaller religious buildings recently
erected in a Gothic manner. Didron lists the Chapel of the Dames-de-BonSecours designed by a little-known architect known as Breton in the early 1840s.
There was a royal mausoleum, La Chapelle Saint-Ferdinand on the avenue
Pershing in Neuilly-sur-Seine, designed by Pierre Fontaine during the same
period. There was also a Gothic design for the fountain of the garden of NotreDame by Alphonse Vigoureux, architect of the city of Paris. Apart from these
ecclesiastical structures, several private buildings and Parisian immeubles should
be added to the short list of Neo-Gothic structures in Paris.
74 Following suggestions made by painter François-Marius Granet to the
Académie, there seems to have been a new willingness to participate in current
artistic debates.
75 In the minutes of the meeting of the Académie on April 11, 1846, Désiré RaoulRochette stated that it was decided that the report would be published “sous
la forme ordinaire des publications de l’Institut.” I could not find the separate
pamphlet at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The report was published as
“Considérations sur la question de savoir s’il est convenable au XIXe siècle de
bâtir des églises en style gothique,” in the Revue archéologique 3 (1846): 179–185,
republished in Revue générale de l’architecture et des travaux publics, hereafter
RGATP, 6 (1846): cols. 316–321, and also issued as part of Viollet-le-Duc’s
counter-argument in “Du style gothique au XIXe siècle,” AA 4 (1846): 326–333.
76 Viollet-le-Duc, “Du style gothique au XIXe siècle,” AA 4 (June 1846): 325–353.
77 Jean-Baptiste Lassus, “Variétés. Réaction de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts contre
l’art Gothique,” La démocratie pacifique, June 19 and 20, 1846, and “Réaction de
l’Académie des Beaux-Arts contre l’art gothique,” Moniteur des arts 24 (July 12,
1846): 185–186, and Moniteur des arts 25 (July 19, 1846): 193–195.
78 César Daly, “Opinion de l’Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts sur l’architecture
gothique,” RGATP 6 (1846): cols. 313–316.
79 Gabriel Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,” La revue
nouvelle (October 1846): 46–80.
80 Georges de Villers, “Est-il convenable de bâtir, au XIXe siècle, des églises dans
le style ogival? Réponse au rapport de M. Raoul-Rochette,” Bulletin monumental
12 (1846): 541–567; Alphonse Le Flaguais, “Aux antiquaires, après le manifeste
de l’académie des Beaux-Arts au sujet du style ogival,” Bulletin monumental 12
(1846): 542–574.
81 See, for instance, A. Morin, “De la construction d’une église gothique au
XIXe siècle,” Moniteur des arts 13 (1846): 99–100; Louis Aimart, De l’art religieux
reviving the gothic 161
et monumental (Nancy: Vagner, 1847); and a M. Parey, “Rapport sur le style
architectural le plus convenable pour la construction des églises,” Mémoires et
documents publiés par la Société d’agriculture, d’archéologie et d’histoire naturelle de
la Manche (Saint-Lô: Élie, 1846). Didron mentions a pamphlet by Étienne [sic,
actually Eustache] de La Quérière, Architecture, Architectes: Rénovation du style
gothique (Rouen: Imprimerie A. Péron, 1847).
82 At least, according to Gabriel Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style
gothique,” La revue nouvelle 11 (October 1846): 65.
83 David Van Zanten has suggested that Raoul-Rochette’s report reflects new
developments toward a psychological aesthetics drawn from Cousin and
Jouffroy; see Van Zanten’s Designing Paris: The Architecture of Duban, Labrouste,
Duc, and Vaudoyer (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1987), 194–196. More work
would be necessary to back up this interesting claim, as Raoul-Rochette’s short
text, in itself, fits rather well within the compass of the traditional notion of
imitation, even if he does not directly refer to the primitive hut.
84 Raoul-Rochette, “Considérations sur la question de savoir,” 327.
85 “Ces ‘Considérations’ sont le résultat d’opinions tellement diverses, que M.
le secrétaire perpétuel, malgré toute la souplesse de son talent, n’a pu éviter
les énigmes et les contradictions,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Du style gothique au XIXe
siècle,” 335.
86 Raoul-Rochette, “Considérations sur la question de savoir,” 331.
87 Raoul-Rochette, “Considérations sur la question de savoir,” 333.
88 Raoul-Rochette, “Considérations sur la question de savoir,” 332.
89 “Vous renoncez à l’unité, pour sauver le vaisseau de l’Académie,” Viollet-leDuc, “Du style gothique au XIXe siècle,” 337.
90 Viollet-le-Duc, “Du style gothique au XIXe siècle,” 337.
91 “Pour élever quoi que ce soit, ne fût-ce qu’une gnérite, il nous faut un art
arrêté, coordonné par un système qui sois soumis à des principes et à des règles
infranchissables,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Du style gothique au XIXe siècle,” 338.
92 “La vérité se fait jour, et … il n’y aura que les gens intéressés à ne pas la voir
qui chercheront à l’étouffer. Les hommes de bonne foi finiront par s’entendre, et
alors disparaîtront les petites susceptibilités d’école qui les séparent encore. …
Vous aurez beau faire, ce peuple se croira toujours mieux baptisé, mieux marié
dans une église gothique que dans une basilique romaine. Non, messieurs,
vous ne l’arrêterez pas ce flot de l’opinion qui monte toujours; cette digue,
que vous tentez de lui opposer, le fera déborder plus violent, plus rapide,
plus envahissant. … Mais nous poursuivrons notre route, parce que nous
sommes convaincus; parce que, si le génie ne nous accompagne pas (c’est
un compagnon difficile à rencontrer), du moins nous marchons côte à côte
avec le bon sens. Nous élevons et nous élèverons des églises françaises du
XIIIe siècle, parce que nous sommes indignés de voir plier le culte, en France,
à des dispositions monumentales pillées à l’antiquité ou à l’Italie du moyen
âge … parce qu’enfin nous sommes dégoûtés de fouiller vainement parmi
les théories tantôt absolues, tantôt rationnelles, et d’être ballotés du Romain
à la Renaissance, et du Grec au Bas-Empire. Vous n’avez pas pris la chose au
sérieux, messieurs; vous nous avez regardés comme des enfants qui jouent à
la poupée, et qui, ‘par caprice ou par amusement, veulent bâtir des châteaux ou
des églises gothiques.’ Non, messieurs, donnez-nous un ART logique, beau
162 architecture and the historical imagination
de forme, ou laissez-nous reprendre le seul qui ait réuni au plus haut degré
ces deux qualités, chez nous, sur notre sol, quand il n’a pas été mutilé ‘par
l’ignorance ou la barbarie’. Ce ne sont pas des théories vagues qu’il nous faut;
c’est un art adulte. … Laissez-nous donc revenir à notre art, messieurs, plutôt que
de vouloir nous replonger dans le désordre et l’anarchie, au moment où nous
tâchons d’en sortir. … Donnez-nous un art logique et complet, qui remplisse
surtout les conditions d’unité que demande la société aujourd’hui. …Vous
commencerez par avoir des copies; cela est inévitable, cela est nécessaire même
pour connaître toutes les ressources de l’architecture gothique. Nous dirons
plus, vous aurez probablement de mauvaises copies (nous ne sommes pas à cela
près d’un méchant monument de plus ou de moins); mais le principe étant bon,
l’art type inépuisable d’enseignement, les artistes en auront bientôt saisi le sens;
leurs copies alors deviendront intelligentes, raisonnées, et enfin l’architecture
nationale, tout en conservant son unité, sa racine toute française, pourra se
perfectionner aussi bien que la langue l’a déjà fait,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Du style
gothique au XIXe siècle,” 348–352.
93 On Laviron’s art criticism, see Neil McWilliam, Dreams of Happiness: Social Art
and the French Left, 1830–1850 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),
289–314.
94 Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,” 49.
95 Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,” 66.
96 Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,”69.
97 Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,”52.
98 Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,” 66.
99 Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,” 71.
100 Gabriel Laviron, “De l’avenir de l’architecture. Coup d’oeil sur l’histoire général
des Beaux-Arts,” Revue indépendante (September 1847). I have consulted the
separate reprint (Paris: Amyot et Didron, 1847), 35–36.
101 Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,” 62.
102 Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,” 62.
103 Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,” 62.
104 Louis Gounod, “Note relative à quelques opinions émises dans les Annales
archéologiques, À M. César Daly,” RGATP 7 (1847): cols. 28–32. In 3 (1842): col.
475, and in Louis Hautecoeur, Histoire de l’architecture classique en France, 7 vols.
(Paris: Picard: 1955–1957), vol. 6, 328, Gounod is identified as a student of JeanNicolas Huyot, but Edmond-Augustin Delaire lists him as a student of Victor
Baltard. See Delaire’s Les architectes élèves de l’École des Beaux-Arts (Paris: Librairie
de la construction moderne, 1907), 280.
105 Gounod, “Note relative à quelques opinions émises dans les Annales
archéologiques,” col. 30.
106 César Daly, “De la liberté dans l’art—À Monsieur Ludovic Vitet,” RGATP 7
(1847): cols. 392–408 and 430–431.
107 César Daly, “La vérité ou la guerre, choisissez,” RGATP 7 (1847): cols. 428–430.
108 Daly, “De la liberté dans l’art,” cols. 395–398.
109 César Daly, “Introduction,” RGATP 14 (1856): cols. 2–3.
reviving the gothic 163
110 “Si le XIIIe siècle eût fondé l’Académie, notre art national ne se serait pas perdu.
Gardienne sévère des types anciens, l’Académie n’eût pas laissé altérer cette
belle architecture de saint Louis,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Du style gothique au XIXe
siècle,” 353.
111 “Pour former un art nouveau, il faut une civilisation nouvelle, et nous ne
sommes pas dans ce cas,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Du style gothique au XIXe siècle,”
351.
112 Buchez, “Histoire abrégé des Français,” Histoire parlementaire de la révolution
française, 40 vols. (Paris: Paulin, 1834–1838), vol. 1, 1.
113 From a remark in Adrian Stokes, “Smooth and Rough,” The Critical Writings of
Adrian Stokes, 3 vols. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), vol. 2, 255. In that
passage, Stokes evokes the writings of André Malraux.
114 Bergdoll, Léon Vaudoyer, 114–119.
115 Jean-Jacques Goblot, Le Globe, 1824–1830: documents pour servir à l’histoire de la
presse littéraire (Paris: Honoré Champion éditeur, 1993), 463. It is for this reason
that Didron wanted, in good Hugolian fashion, to write an Histoire du Diable
after having written his Histoire de Dieu. See Alphonse-Napoléon Didron, Manuel
d’iconographie chrétienne, grecque et latine (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1845), 80, n.1.
116 Laviron, “L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,” 78.
117 “…; pourquoi donc n’essaierions-nous pas d’être originaux ‘en nous assimilant,
si l’on peut ainsi dire … à l’art’ français du XIIIe siècle?” Viollet-le-Duc, “Du
style gothique au XIXe siècle,” 347. Viollet-le-Duc actually quotes the term
“assimilation” from Raoul-Rochette’s report.
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5
The Gothic Narrated
Introït
Viollet-le-Duc’s first publication, the long article entitled “De la
construction des édifices religieux en France depuis le commencement du
Christianisme jusqu’au XVIe siècle,” which he published in installments
in Annales archéologiques between 1844 and 1848,1 opens with a lament:
Turning to the past, moans Viollet-le-Duc, is always a sign of great distress,
“an extreme resource for spirits who despair of the present.”2 Today, when
“no tradition is left standing,”3 however, archaeology is the only recourse:
“This second growth … never has the vigor and sap of the first: it is often
pale and wan. But it is at least the offshoot of good stock, and we should
never discount it.”4
After conjuring a disquieting image of a remote past yearning for artistic
restoration, Viollet-le-Duc progressively moves into a more authoritative
and comforting mode. He recalls for his reader the “immense efforts” at
historical recovery which have been made, and the government bodies
that have been created to institutionalize historical studies: “archaeology
is no longer a vain science; … it has become the center of an immense
labor.” It is therefore possible to think that the nation’s creative vitality
can be reawakened. Christian and national monuments are dormant seeds
waiting to be fertilized. But if this is true in principle, warns Viollet-le-Duc,
the application is difficult. Only the well-prepared exegete, member of that
“small troop of savants and artists [submitted to archaeology],” can “renew
the broken thread.”5
This foreword constitutes a perfect example of what Roland Barthes once
described as the “purifying introït” in historical discourse: a detour through
the historian’s own time, whereby his own subjectivity is shown to be apt
for the historical task at hand. According to Barthes, such an utterance is
not merely intended to clarify methodological issues. It is a means to “dechronologize the ‘thread’ of history and to restore, even though it may merely
be a matter of reminiscence or nostalgia, a form of time that is complex,
parametric, and not the least linear: a form of time whose spatial depths
166 architecture and the historical imagination
recall the mythic time of the ancient cosmogonies.”6 In the installments of his
Annales essay, Viollet-le-Duc laid out a thesis of temporal non-linearity. If he
at first rejected the possibility of “regenerating” pre-Christian ideas within
the Christian era (“philosophical systems,” he wrote, “as political systems,
are ordered in successive layers, … buried and forgotten. Ancient ideas,
like antediluvian matter, no longer preoccupy more than a few scholars”),7
he asserts that it is possible and necessary to retrace one’s steps. Let’s not
think, he comments in his introduction, that “scholars and artists trying to
retrieve the splendid arts of our forefathers … want to make us go backward
[nous faire rétrograder], but rather that they want to return to the true path
[reprendre le vrai chemin] that we should have never abandoned.”8 Time
is a metamorphosis that remains in contact with its previous incarnation
thanks to the generative idea: “We are Christians today like we were in the
thirteenth century,” wrote Viollet-le-Duc, “we are driven by the same spirit.
Our religion, which is the basis of our civilization, … is as young as it was
in 1200.”9 The vitalist priest Abbé Bautain, in his Psychologie expérimentale of
1839, had explained the principle: whatever has a “natural” right to exist,
he argued, “always issues originally from a center, a foyer, which bears
within it the potentiality of its development.”10 That foyer, living center
for a vital growth, necessarily lies in the past. Discontinuities are therefore
necessary to retrieve a truer continuity. In a similar fashion, thanks to the
specially trained artistes-archéologues gathered around the quasi-Masonic
administration of the Commission des monuments historiques, modern
France can now regain contact with its founding era, renewing contact with
“a science and an art previously unknown and lost today.”11
Viollet-le-Duc’s Account of Gothic Construction: A Brief Overview
Probably the most distinguishing feature of Viollet-le-Duc’s account of Gothic
construction in Annales, in contrast to his later and more familiar exposition in
the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, is the eagerness with which he wanted
to reveal his newly discovered “secret.” Little concerned with the social and
historical context that gave rise to the Gothic, even omitting any reference to
the liberal and secular accounts of Ludovic Vitet and Charles Magnin with
which he is generally associated, Viollet-le-Duc primarily wished to prove
the Gothic’s superiority: not only is it more Christian (or Catholic) and more
French, it is also plainly superior. “Thirteenth-century architects knew how
to build better than their predecessors and better than their successors.”12
Their monuments are the product of an intense desire for “an entirely new
style of architecture [Viollet-le-Duc’s own emphasis].”13 “Why?” he asked. “It
is not within our province to search for the cause; we limit ourselves to the
description of its effect.”14 That description of the Gothic system forms the
core of “De la construction des édifices religieux en France,” as indeed it
forms the core concept of his lifelong battle against academic architecture.
the gothic narrated 167
Viollet-le-Duc’s account is long, intricate, full of digressions, spreading
over seven installments, divided into five “chapters” that were written over
a period of four years, and never completed. He repeats himself with the
intention of always presenting a new example or a fresh angle, but it is always
the same question. It is at first poorly illustrated, though eventually Violletle-Duc introduced the very special woodcuts he inserted into the text which
would become such a central feature of the future Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture, and which are discussed at length later. Yet, already in the first
installment of 1844, all the elements were set.
From the start, he rendered his description of the Middle Ages à la postrevolutionary France: recovering from the “terreur panique” generated by the
turn of the first millennium, the civilizing forces of the Middle Ages resumed
their course with renewed energy. Suddenly, all through the territories of
Normandy, Picardy, Burgundy, Île-de-France, and Auvergne appeared
a novel type of construction: seeking a “new” architecture, larger, more
durable, and more coherent, the medieval builders replaced the traditional
carpentry roofs of their churches with stone vaults. This was the initial step
of the long medieval building adventure. By trial and error, builders would
progressively develop the full potential of that vaulted space. “In French
cathedrals [of the thirteenth century],” wrote Viollet-le-Duc, “the système de
la VOÛTE is used alone, it is developed to its furthest limit and to its most
truthful application.”15
This evolution follows distinct stages, but the essential characteristics
appear early. Willfully leaving behind the massive concrete construction of the
Romans, a technique only possible within a slave economy, French builders
of the eleventh century adopt a lighter system whose strength relies entirely
in the cunning assembly of smaller stones, easily handled by one worker
and allowing greater tolerance to construction settlement and movement. A
new art of stereotomy develops: “Each block of stone is completely cut and
carved before being assembled; it then finds its place in the whole without
ever needing to be touched again by the tools of the mason.”16 Critical of
the modern technique of ravalement (laying of stone in rough form with the
finish carving following assembly), Viollet-le-Duc considered the exacting
discipline of pre-finishing stone crucial. Buildings thus assembled become a
kind of jigsaw puzzle, stones cut to fit exactly, the ornamental outer layer
perfectly expressive of the logic of assembly.
Henri Labrouste had already placed great emphasis in his teaching on the
science of imbrications inherent to vaulted construction, where stability relies
on forces opposing one another dynamically rather than as sheer mass,17 a
lesson that Viollet-le-Duc would no doubt have learned indirectly through
his colleague Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus at Sainte-Chapelle. But unlike
Labrouste, who had found inspiration for the idea in Cyclopean and Etruscan
arcuated constructions, Viollet-le-Duc preferred to think of it as a unique
and decisive development within the evolution of medieval construction.
This paralleled Lassus’s claim that Gothic builders had endowed their
168 architecture and the historical imagination
construction with a new human scale in contrast to the abstract modularity of
antiquity (reflecting Christianity’s new discovery of individual freedom): not
only was each stone uniquely positioned within the whole, but one mason,
affixing his signature to each stone he carved, was himself answerable for
its completion. As already mentioned, there is also an affinity between this
ennobling of the part within the unity of the whole and Alphonse-Napoléon
Didron’s meticulous studies of medieval iconography, in which each statuary
was a distinct and necessary sign within the whole economy of the “système
historié.” The new science of medieval stereotomy is the expression of a new
type of coherence instinctively pursued by medieval builders: each stone
is distinct, yet fits perfectly within a totally unified ensemble. In Gothic
buildings, claimed Viollet-le-Duc, “like in divine works, everything has its
place and its role. Remove the smallest fragment, and you will have destroyed
the whole.”18 The Roman technique of blocage—small irregular stones thrown
in a soup of mortar—progressively disappeared.
At the end of the first installment, Viollet-le-Duc introduces the first step
in the development of a new skeletal mode of differentiated functional parts:
to the simple barrel vault uniformly dressed is added a series of transverse
reinforcing arches laid regularly along the nave, a system that he will illustrate
later in the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture (Fig. 5.1). Correspondingly,
the nave wall is reinforced by a series of buttressing piers aligned with these
new ribs. The barrel vault and its walls become, at least conceptually, an infill
skin stretched between structural ribs: “Already the churches of the eleventh
century possess this vigorous skeleton, which, once made lighter and studied
more carefully, will create the most beautiful architectonic combinations. The
transverse arch, made independent of the vault, gives it nerve and strength
without any added burden.”19 It was thus an example of “this elastic mode of
construction … which the thirteenth century perfected in such extraordinary
fashion.”20
Further improvements were rapidly developed. Realizing that the relief
transverse arches did not work the way they were intended, and that the
nave walls continued to falter under the lateral thrust of the heavy barrel
vault that spread along its length, medieval builders had to devise a means
to displace the diagonal thrust to the buttressing piers. They turned to the
Roman groin vault. Geometrically generated from the intersection of two halfcylinders crossing each other at right angles, such vaulting en arête effectively
transferred the greater part of the loads to the corners of each bay and onto the
nave piers, freeing the wall space between the piers. The groin vault, however,
had two major drawbacks, according to Viollet-le-Duc. First, the bay had to be
designed on a square plan; otherwise the vault was made of interpenetrating
cylinders of different diameters that generated awkward elliptical curves
along the spines that proved at once unsightly and very difficult to build.
Second, the groin vault was a mode of construction that led to dangerous
tears whenever uneven settlement occurred. It had none of the “elasticity” of
an independent skeleton.
the gothic narrated 169
5.1 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Early
Romanesque
vaulting
system. Wood
engraving by
E. Guillaumot.
Fig. 3 of
“Construction,”
from Dictionnaire
raisonné de
l’architecture, vol.
4, 1859. Private
collection
Confronted with such difficulties, so the story goes, medieval masons
were led to devise a permanent mode of centering, replacing the traditional
timber scaffold with the stone ogive or rib running diagonally from one
corner of the vault to the other (the arc-ogive proper), which remained
in place once the construction was completed (Fig. 5.2). The groin vault
was thus split into two distinct parts: a skeleton and a series of vaults
filling the space in between. The latter were eventually built as pure infill,
independent of the ribs, so that the skeleton could “move” without tearing
the vaulted skin. The so-called elasticity of the original transverse arch
was thus extended to the entire bay. Viollet-le-Duc’s detailed account of
the various stages whereby a skeletal structure completely liberated itself
from the mass of the wall or the vault, a description that he considerably
expanded in the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, is too complex to be
recounted in detail, but the essential idea is that of liberation: a system of
ribs pulled out of the mass of the vault, which form an independent and
170 architecture and the historical imagination
5.2 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Early form of
the Gothic rib
vault. Unsigned
wood engraving.
Fig. 21 of
“Construction,”
from Dictionnaire
raisonné de
l’architecture, vol.
4, 1859. Private
collection
elastic skeleton. Viollet-le-Duc emphasized how the new vaulting system
was extremely flexible, allowing the covering of any complex configuration
of spaces as long as it could be divided into a series of triangular segments.
He also stressed the ease of its erection. The ribs followed a single curve
and their voussoirs (or “claveaux”) of similar size were easily handled by
one mason. Once the ribs were erected, the infill of the vaults (“voûtains”)
could be built simply using a sliding wooden template (a “cerce”) bearing
on the outer curve or surface (the extrados) of the ribs. In short, Gothic
construction was flexible, simple and economical.
The Abbey Church of Sainte-Madeleine in Vézelay served as the key
illustration of the emergence of that new system of construction. It was not just
an example ready at hand: Vézelay, for Viollet-le-Duc, was the very site where
the Gothic idea was born. It was while building its narthex that medieval
builders first “split” the groin vaults into a frame distinct from its infill panels
by adding a raised rib at the diagonal ridges as a kind of permanent structural
scaffold (see Fig. 3.11). Forces and thrusts were thus reduced to linear patterns.
Moreover, the narthex’s central groin vaults were supported on either side by
the lower aisle’s smaller vaults, an embryonic form of the flying buttress. Thus
were put in place all the essential elements that would later make up the fully
articulated Gothic system:
Let us remove the gallery vaults in the narthex at Vézelay and leave only the small
arches that support the larger ones, let us build a roof over the side aisles, insert
windows below the folds of the larger vault, and we have resolved the problem of
the gothic narrated 171
supporting the vaults of large naves on thin walls, and of lighting them with exterior
windows, opened in the wall above the aisles.21
The Gothic idea is only in need of further clarification: “The consequences of
this new system are such that, within fifty years, Gothic architecture developed
and arrived at its greatest perfection.”22 There is a quasi-mythic coincidence
between Vézelay, the site of Viollet-le-Duc’s own initiation into the arcane
realm of Gothic construction, and Vézelay, the crucial experimental terrain
for the development of a new structural system during the Middle Ages.
Viollet-le-Duc quite loosely sketches out further refinements in Gothic
construction, more and more frequently allowing himself to digress into
polemics against Beaux-Arts conventions, to which he opposes the economy
and common sense of Gothic builders. After a brief discussion of the
increasing complexity of the nave piers, articulated into a series of colonnettes, a
continuation of the complex system of arch ribs of the vault above, he expands
on the crucial development and mechanism of the flying buttress. He first
describes how the upper portion of these exterior semi-circular arches was set
against the upper part of the nave wall at precisely the point of the resultant
5.3 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
The system of the
flying buttress.
Wood engraving
by E. Guillaumot.
Fig. 20 of “De
la construction
des édifices
religieux en
France,” Annales
archéologiques,
vol. 6, 1847.
Private collection
172 architecture and the historical imagination
5.4 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Laon
Cathedral, Center
of the Crossing.
Wood engraving
by E. Guillaumot.
Figs. 36–37 of “De
la construction
des édifices
religieux en
France,” Annales
archéologiques,
vol. 6, 1847.
Private collection
lateral thrust of the main vault of the building
(Fig. 5.3). As the flying buttress transferred
all the thrust to peripheral buttresses, these
massive construction members virtually
carried the whole weight of the church. Once
the principle was established, he explains, the
diameter of the main piers of the nave could
thus progressively narrow (allowing increased
space and light for the public), its original
wide footing being no longer necessary as it
ceased to bear any of the diagonal thrust. Even
the peripheral buttresses could eventually be
made narrower by the addition of pinnacles
at their summit, “the motif for an admirable
decoration,”23 which acted as counterweights.
Completing his discussion of flying buttress,
Viollet-le-Duc describes at length the intricate
system of water drainage that was channelled
through it from the steep roof, terminating with
gargoyles which efficiently spewed the water
away from the face of the building, preventing
deterioration brought about by humidity and
decay.
The last installments expanded on the finer
grain of Gothic construction, documenting its progressive diminution of the
ratio between solid and void. Viollet-le-Duc details with particular delight
the double wall structure pierced with galleries and passages that rises in a
delicate balance above the nave piers (Fig. 5.4). Through bracing by means
of stone shafts laid en délit (stone laid perpendicular to the quarry bed), the
structure simultaneously acquired the greatest rigidity and most remarkable
expression of delicate embroidery. Viollet-le-Duc ended the last chapter of
his series with the complex stereometry of the springing point of the Gothic
vault. Significantly, at this point in his discussion, drawings come to play
a much greater role. He devises for the first time his type of anatomical
representations of constructive segments (Fig. 5.3). But it would still be a good
ten years before he would draw the celebrated exploded view of the springing
point of the vault which adorns the article on “Construction” in the fourth
volume of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, a type of drawing that will
be discussed in another chapter.
Taxonomy versus Narration
It has long been established that Viollet-le-Duc’s account of Gothic construction
draws narrowly on a set of earlier sources, particularly eighteenth-century
the gothic narrated 173
Neoclassical interpretations of Gothic construction. In the late 1950s, Robin
Middleton brought to light for the first time this extended “Greco–Gothic”
rational tradition at the heart of French architecture, where the spatial and
structural elegance of the Gothic was interpreted in classical terms.24 The key
actors in its formulation were Claude Perrault, Michel de Frémin, the Abbé
Jean-Louis de Cordemoy, François Derand, and Amédée-François Frézier. But
even reading such a measured summary of eighteenth-century knowledge as
Jacques-François Blondel’s Cours d’architecture is telling.25 From the passage
on Gothic construction in the sixth and last volume, written by Pierre Patte in
1777, one can glean almost word for word some of the major elements Violletle-Duc used to describe Gothic construction: medieval builders “rectified”
classical architecture, moving toward greater economy and lightness, they
progressively devised a new construction system by trial and error, they
resorted to the pointed arch as a way to reduce lateral thrust, they used
weight to counterbalance weight, they transferred the vaults’ diagonal thrust
to the periphery, and they used slender piers as mere pins for the transfer of
such loads. Every element, every pinnacle even, Patte considered to be part of
a dynamic whole, kept under control by equilibrium.26 “All elements are in a
position of strength, all are laid out to benefit one another,” he summarized
at the end of his analysis.27 That account, which in the words of Middleton
“provided the most comprehensive and virtually the final eighteenth-century
analysis of the [Gothic] style,”28 was clearly, together with the earlier writings of
Frémin, de Cordemoy, and Frézier, one of the key sources for Viollet-le-Duc’s
own understanding of the Gothic.29 These older sources, far from robbing him
of the pleasure of discovery, may well have contributed to Viollet-le-Duc’s
sense of having discovered a secret: Gothic knowledge seeped through time
from the Middle Ages thanks to the French tradition of treatises, old books
that he (and Lassus) collected with passion.
The importance of these eighteenth-century sources should not cause us to
forget that many nineteenth-century architects or archaeologists had already
turned their attention to Gothic structure. Apart from Jean Rondelet, whose
austere but well-diffused L’art de bâtir surreptitiously carried much of the
eighteenth-century rational tradition into the nineteenth century, there were
other figures, such as, in Germany, the architect Johann Claudius von Lassaulx
and the engineer Ludwig Friedrich Wolfram, and in England, the scientist
and polymath William Whewell and the archaeologist Robert Willis.30 Key
articles by Lassaulx and Willis had been translated and published in French
journals, as the Gothic question attracted pan-European interest.31 In many
of these studies, Gothic construction was not only a technical issue, but also
an index to a historical puzzle more or less tied to questions of origins. It is
unlikely that Viollet-le-Duc drew significantly from these nineteenth-century
writers, but like them, he saw the question in historical terms. So, in contrast
to eighteenth-century treatises that dwelled mainly on Gothic construction
as an already perfected system, appealing because of its spatial qualities and
ingenuity, Viollet-le-Duc emphasized its development in time, in the sense
174 architecture and the historical imagination
of an organic formation. Only in considering the development of medieval
vaulting from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries is the intelligibility of
the Gothic revealed. Unlike Patte or Rondelet, Viollet-le-Duc’s aim, like other
members of the Annales group, was historical restoration rather than the
promotion of technical knowledge. In fact, at this point in his career, Violletle-Duc showed no interest in new materials and techniques. He was entirely
focused on reviving the old French ways.
The great French art historian Henri Focillon understood well that
aspect of Viollet-le-Duc’s work. Commenting on architect Pol Abraham’s
1934 “engineering” critique of Viollet-le-Duc’s interpretation of Gothic
construction, Focillon lucidly saw it as the product of a different method
rather than a competing answer to a similar question. Here is how he saw
fit to describe the “problème de l’ogive” to give credence to Viollet-le-Duc’s
approach. I quote in full because many ramifications of Focillon’s response
have great importance in this context:
The question of the Gothic vault [le problème de l’ogive] cannot be posed in abstracto,
considered in and of itself, with some hasty concessions on primitive forms. It
must follow the curve of evolution, occurring over time, taking shape in a series of
successive experiments. I add … that the builder of 1134 does not know, nor does he
proceed or reason like the builder of 1934; and that if we want to grasp the meaning
and the full reach of this question, the problem is, in large measure, a problem of
restituting an intellectual process. To think like the artist, this is the rule of our
research. But the artist does not think once and for all. He searches, he invents,
he adapts, he improves, he makes mistakes. Certain forms, unsuited for life, are
abandoned after trials and errors, while others follow their vigorous life force. The
question of the Gothic vault is thus of a double nature. It is at once historical and
constructive.32
Focillon is not interested in knowing whether Viollet-le-Duc’s account is true
to the distribution of loads in a positivist, engineering sense, but rather if it
is true to medieval builders’ thinking. The constructional logic is of interest
only as a means “to think as the artist”: to follow the “trials and errors” of
medieval masons. Focillon thus brings us back to the process of historical
identification discussed in previous chapters. What he helps to emphasize is
that the identification process is possible only if there is a followable story. The
trials and errors of the medieval builders provide precisely such a followable
plot, thanks to which the identification can take hold.
It is of course well known that “narration” was the privileged form of
exposition in Romantic historical writing, a subject that has been analyzed
in great detail by many scholars, and especially Hayden White in his classic
study on rhetorical forms of historical writing in the nineteenth century. The
question of “narration” may not appear to be an obvious architectural theme,
but given that architects (and archaeologists) of the period paid considerable
attention to the history of architecture, one may legitimately assume that the
desire to “narrate” found its way into their work as it did into that of historians
proper. Historical attitudes and theories of architects of the Romantic era have
the gothic narrated 175
been the subject of many analyses, describing their thoughts about the nature
of progress and change in architectural development.33 The latter issue has
been identified as the central question of architectural theory in the nineteenth
century, historical exposition replacing an older tradition of treatises. These
studies on historicism in architecture emphasized how historical theories
searched for a way to disclose the nature of architectural evolution, in short,
how the past could be narrated. Neil Levine and Barry Bergdoll have even
shown how the architecture of Félix Duban, Labrouste, or Léon Vaudoyer
could be experienced narratively, as a sequence of historical tableaux.34
The central issue for Romantic architects was certainly to identify once and
for all the “true story” hidden behind the medley of archaeological records
that they accumulated in their studies. The exacting nature of Labrouste’s
celebrated project to restore the three Greek temples at Paestum was not
imposed to satisfy some a priori “rationalist” ideal (whatever that could have
meant for Romantics); it was instead the product of a quasi-religious respect
for historical fragments coming from ancient Greece. Only by means of the
most scrupulous recording could the mystery of the translation of classicism
from Greece to Italy be disclosed.35 The minute attention to structural
modifications from one temple to the other was conceived by Labrouste as
the most favorable means of tracing the historical evolution. In this regard,
my claim that Viollet-le-Duc’s shift of attention from polychromy to structure
in the early 1840s was motivated by the capacity of construction to create a
more vivid and embodied historical representation could partly be extended
to the earlier generation.
In Hayden White’s 1980 article “The Value of Narrativity in the
Representation of Reality,” he argued that, for modern historians, “the true”
in historical writing could be identified with “the real” “only insofar as it can
be shown to possess the character of narrativity.”36 Narrative, explains White,
following earlier insights by Barthes, is the most potent form of discourse
for the historian because it allows him to disappear behind the story: as a
narrative, the account seems to naturally propel itself as if moved from
inside. Yet, paradoxically, narration is also the form most closely associated
with fictional writing. Once narrated, history acquires “the formal coherency
of a story” with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Thanks to that taking
shape, claims White, “the conflicting claims of the imaginary and the real are
mediated, arbitrated, or resolved in a discourse.”37 Setting aside the Lacanian
categories of “real” versus “imaginary,” which White does not wish to push,
he brings us again to a process of identification: “The notion that sequences of
real events possess the formal attributes of the stories we tell about imaginary
events,” he continues, “could only have its origin in wishes, daydreams,
reveries.” In other words, historical events can take the form of a story only
insofar as historians can imagine having themselves experienced them, in the
form of a phantasm. Through such primary incorporation (or internalization)
of history, the historian seems to eschew all the pitfalls of representation. The
real is reconciled with the imagined.
176 architecture and the historical imagination
To emphasize the issue of narration in historical discourse would then
mean to pay attention to the formulations where historical events appear to
“tell themselves,” eliminating any felt presence of the narrator. Returning to
Viollet-le-Duc’s account of medieval architecture in Annales, let’s consider how
he may have narrativized “the Gothic,” particularly in view of the competing
accounts current at the time. Let’s compare it, for instance, to the history that
formed the most authoritative precedent to his own: Arcisse de Caumont’s
Cours d’antiquités monumentales professé à Caen en 1830. Histoire de l’art dans
l’ouest de la France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’au XVIIIe siècle, published
in six thick octavo volumes between 1830 and 1843. Working out of his native
Normandy, de Caumont was recognized as the leading French medieval
archaeologist of his time. His Cours—the summation of his archaeological
studies—was the most obvious reference manual for anyone involved in
the study of medieval monuments in the 1840s, including, one can assume,
anyone involved in restoration work. In 1850, an abbreviated version was
published under the significant title Abécédaire ou rudiment d’archéologie, which
went through several editions in the nineteenth century. The Instructions du
comité historique des arts et monuments, a set of “official” government guidelines
for archaeological observations in France, written collaboratively by Prosper
Mérimée, Alexandre-Albert Lenoir, Auguste Le Prévost, and Charles
Lenormant in the early 1840s, were clearly inspired by de Caumont’s method
of observation (even if the categories of classification varied significantly). We
should also recall that during his travels to Normandy in the 1830s, Violletle-Duc had met de Caumont, who made generous and curious reference to
the drawings of “M. le Duc, antiquaire distingué” in a footnote to volume four
(1833) of his Cours d’antiquités monumentales.
First trained as a natural scientist by the Linnean zoologist Félix Lamouroux,
de Caumont, also a fervent geologist, sought to bring to archaeology the
methods, precision, and rigorous classification systems of the exact sciences.
His “Essai sur l’architecture religieuse du moyen âge, particulièrement en
Normandie,” which he published in article form in 1824, at the young age
of 23, proposed the first complete and coherent stylistic classification for
medieval architecture.38 De Caumont’s method relied chiefly on empirical
observation and synthetic categorization. Collecting as much information
about as many monuments as possible (relying heavily on the work of his
slightly older antiquarian colleagues and first mentors, the archaeologists
Charles de Gerville and Auguste Le Prévost—both fellow Normans), he
sought to identify, by a comparative method, clear stylistic periods in the
development of medieval architecture in Normandy. His work constitutes
a sort of “objective” pendant to Baron Taylor’s romanticised scenes of
Normandy published at the same time. While Baron Taylor pictorialized
Normandy in his Voyage pittoresque et romantique, de Caumont anatomized it.
The former approach did not really encroach upon the categorizations of the
latter: they were simply two complementary forms of recording amid ongoing
efforts at bringing French history back to life. In his early essay on medieval
the gothic narrated 177
architecture, the young de Caumont had even proposed to rename Gothic art,
art romantique, showing where his allegiance really lay.39
If de Caumont’s archaeological method was turned against a specific form
of historical discourse, it was speculative theorizing about origins, a tendency
in great vogue at the time. In the introductory pages to the first volume of his
Cours, he clearly warns that he is uninterested in debates about such questions.
His archaeology would confine itself to recording objective facts, documenting
the transformation of architectural forms in and around Normandy without
trying to define causes, keeping, as he maintained, to generally established
opinions on these matters. I emphasize this critical strand in de Caumont’s
writing because it was precisely by dwelling on the issues of origins and
filiations that Romantic historiography had been able to develop strong
historical narratives. Jacques-Nicholas-Augustin Thierry, for instance, the
historian who arguably produced the most potent (and influential) narrative
histories of France in the early nineteenth century, had constructed his entire
historiography around the movement of the people predicated upon racial
displacement and conquests. His account of the “progress” of the “Third
Estate” resembled, in his own words, “that of a rising tide, which seems to
advance and recede without interruption, but which still gains ground and
reaches its destined point.”40 In Thierry’s writings, we are following a plot.
The story is structured around a beginning, a middle, and an end.
A similar tendency was very strong in Romantic archaeology. I have
established elsewhere the complex genealogy of the idea of an “evolutive”
schema for the history of architecture.41 The first examples can be traced back
to the work of antiquarians of the eighteenth century, but evolutive histories
trying to disentangle the mystery of change and development in architecture
through the ages developed with unusual intensity and with a new character
in the late-1820s and 1830s. Putting aside Hugo’s acclaimed “Ceci tuera cela,”
which was to a great extent an attempt at defining the structure and rhythm
of a universal history of architecture, articles on the history of architecture
appear in myriad journals of various leanings: Buchez’s L’Européen, Migne’s
L’Univers, Lamennais’ L’Avenir, the baron d’Eckstein’s Le Catholique,
Monglave’s Journal de l’Institut historique, Charton’s Le Magasin pittoresque,
as well as the Revue de Paris, Revue française, L’Artiste, among others. More
than traditional mimetic arts, architecture seemed to afford a direct portrait
of historical existence. Architectural history thus helped define the unity
of a universal history, identifying origins, tracking development through
filiations, and determining its end. In archaeological circles, the search was
similar. A great amount of energy was devoted to Oriental and Etruscan
archaeology, an effort organized largely around the creation of the panEuropean Institut de correspondance archéologique in Rome. In his short but
important encyclopedia entry on archaeology, the distinguished archaeologist
Charles Lenormant (companion to Jean-François Champollion in Egypt,
leading member of L’Institut de correspondance archéologique, and as we
saw in Chapter 3, a very active member of the Commission des monuments
178 architecture and the historical imagination
historiques) described the new (Romantic) orientation of the discipline in
terms of a search for origins (particularly Oriental origins), erudition per se
taking a back seat: “Archaeology has returned to what it was at the time of
Denys d’Halicarnasse, the science of origin [Lenormant’s emphasis].”42 The
crucial issue, according to him, was the “search using all possible means”
for “the primary, intimate liaison that must have tied the West to Oriental
civilization.”43
Medieval archaeology was, of course, not impervious to quests for grand
historical narratives. The question of the “l’origine de l’ogive” was in fact
a central problem in the establishment of a continuous history: medieval
architecture created a difficult but fascinating break within an otherwise
clear set of transformations within the classical tradition, particularly when
the issue of a legitimately Christian form of architecture was brought to bear
on the issue. French antiquarian Séroux d’Agincourt’s research on the arts
of the Middle Ages in Europe, conducted from Rome over more than three
decades around the turn of the nineteenth century, is an early example of
an obsessive auscultation of that darker period in Western art, attempting to
close the gap between antiquity and the Renaissance. But the classic Romantic
solution to the problem came later, an explanation emerging in light of the
idea of an “Oriental” ferment at the source of the medieval metamorphosis of
Western architecture. The story has its variations, but architect Albert Lenoir’s
two-strain theory, a historical scheme developed around 1834 from earlier
writings of Ludovic Vitet, provides one of its most notable formulations. Out
of the remains of antiquity, as Barry Bergdoll recently summarized the matter,
two different forms of architecture developed, the style latin in the Western
Empire, and the style byzantin in the Eastern half. The former remained
entirely dependant upon the ancient traditions in Italy, while the latter was
profoundly transformed by its contact with Greece and the Orient. Eventually
the style latin was “fertilized” by the orientalized style byzantin, leading to a
fusion in the crucible of Venice and Norman Sicily, which in turn led to the
creation of the Gothic in Western Europe. The ogive had an Oriental origin,
but produced its full and unique development only in Western Europe.44
Lenormant, authoritative on any aspect of Oriental archaeology, had already
settled the question in more or less the same terms in his brief but famous
letter addressed to de Caumont in 1833.45
De Caumont would quote long passages from that letter in his Cours, but
only to dispense with the question. His own method was different. Instead of
emphasizing continuities, he was led by his desire for systematic classification
to stress divisions, defining various horizons chronologiques structuring a
géographie des styles. The most famous (and enduring) division, established
very early by de Caumont (again under the influence of de Gerville and Le
Prévost), was the distinction between the Romanesque (a denomination first
coined by de Caumont) and the Gothic: “two different architectures between
which lies an unexplained revolution.”46 But his exacting descriptions of
stylistic types produced many more subdivisions. Within Romanesque
the gothic narrated 179
architecture, three “chronological horizons” were established: the primordial,
the secondaire, and the tertiaire ou de transition. Similarly, Gothic was divided
into primitif, secondaire, and tertiaire—terminology, he explained in a footnote,
that was drawn from geology.47 Like a stratigraphic section of the earth, the
various stylistic horizons lay one on top of the other in discontinuous strata.
Despite the fact that he resorted to natural metaphors, de Caumont
conceived his categories as artificial. “In archaeology, like in many sciences,”
he wrote in the introduction to the section on medieval ecclesiastical
architecture of his Cours, “the best methods of classification lie necessarily
upon variously graduated abstractions. It is not easy to establish absolute
temporal limits to frame the reign of this or that architectural style.”48 As
French historian Jean Nayrolles recently described, “[de] Caumont is well
able to seize a general evolution [in the development of architectural forms],
but he is incapable of formulating its principle.”49 He may simply have been
unwilling to do so. Coming back to the issue of narration, we could well say
that de Caumont narrated his account of medieval architecture in the sense that
he sought to present it objectively and chronologically with a set of detailed
historical observations. But he did not—to use the distinction made by
Hayden White—narrativize that reality. In other words, he selects, describes,
and orders historical facts, but he does not let these facts tell their own story,
as if propelled from inside. History, in his work, never becomes the object of
an imaginative appropriation. He is an external observer who reports on his
observations; a taxonomist working in the field of history.
Would the archaeologists and architects who emphasized the issue of
continuity—men such as Ludovic Vitet, Léonce Reynaud, and Albert Lenoir—
come closer to this fuller narrative ideal? Yes, insofar as they established a
clear plot for their history, following an organizing principle largely derived
from their focus on the origin and development of the arch, a structural theme
that had been and continued to be central to the first generation of Romantic
architects. Reynaud’s version of the history of architecture, elaborated in 1834
and published under the heading Architecture of the Encyclopédie nouvelle
edited by his brother Jean and by Pierre Leroux, is probably the most succinct
and provocative example of that form of continuous history. The whole is
reduced to the progressive increase in the structural economy of buildings,
from the heavy mass of Celtic and Egyptian architecture to the light arcuation
of Christian Gothic architecture. There is a lot more to Reynaud’s history
than this linear scheme of technical development, but the core of it remains
nonetheless so hopelessly general.
If we now return to Viollet-le-Duc’s 1844 account of Gothic, we can
better gauge its position in relation to these competing stories. He begins by
adopting a posture close to de Caumont’s: not searching “for the cause,” he
limits himself “to the description of its effect.”50 He thus positions himself in
the objective territory of empirical observations and avoids the speculative.
The most pointed indication that he intended to leave behind grand narratives
about origins is the long and rather odd aside in the first installment of
180 architecture and the historical imagination
his “Essai sur l’architecture religieuse du moyen âge, particulièrement en
Normandie,” concerning the Cathedral of Saint-Front in Périgueux. This
“unique edifice,” influenced by Byzantine sources is “an exception,” claims
Viollet-le-Duc; it has “been imitated only in a very small part of France.”51
He then asks rather rhetorically: How could one explain that such a complete
solution to the problem of the cupola on pendentives “remained forgotten
in one corner of France during five centuries”? His conclusion: Medieval
artists had made the clear “resolution … to entirely break with Roman [read
Byzantine] traditions.”52 Medieval masons sought instead to raise monuments
“in a new style of architecture,” entirely free of any Oriental influence. Thus
Viollet-le-Duc severed any connection between his historical account and
Vitet’s orientalizing description of the Romanesque or Lenoir’s concept of a
fusion between the style latin and byzantin.53
Further parallels between Viollet-le-Duc and de Caumont can be made
in their use of geological metaphors. In a passage I have already partially
quoted, Viollet-le-Duc resorts to the image explicitly: “Philosophical systems,
like political systems, are ordered in successive layers as the strata that
compose our planet are layered one over the other, buried and forgotten.”54 At
first glance, Viollet-le-Duc may seem to introduce the same understanding of
historical development as de Caumont had elaborated through his horizons
chronologiques. Yet the two authors use the geological metaphor in completely
opposed ways. De Caumont uses the image of stratification to demonstrate
the possibility of historical legibility, the visually distinct geological layers
providing an intelligible structure within which to establish clear stylistic
phases. Viollet-le-Duc resorts to the same image as ammunition for his
polemic against the hegemony of classicism: ancient architecture is a layer
buried deep in the ground of history and thus irretrievably lost to modern
practitioners. In contrast, the architecture of the French Middle Ages has
not yet been so ossified: it is still present and alive around us, dotting the
landscape of the nation’s native soil. Consequently, Viollet-le-Duc’s account
of medieval architecture must oppose de Caumont’s stylistic horizons: “It is
a fact of the history of architecture, very curious to study,” writes Viollet-leDuc, “this almost insensible transition from Roman art to the art of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries.”55 Here Viollet-le-Duc brushes aside categories such
as the primordial, secondaire, or tertiaire. Even the larger division between the
Romanesque and the Gothic—in widespread usage by the 1840s—is virtually
absent from his account. Instead, the reader is presented with one single
historical adventure whose thread, in the most natural fashion, leads to the
final resolution of the problem of vaulting a church while allowing maximum
space and light. From the old basilica church to the fully formed Gothic
cathedral it is one continuous search.
To be sure, Viollet-le-Duc’s articles published in Annales do not exactly fit
White’s description of a continuous narrative: Viollet-le-Duc always leads
his account, bringing us back to his own time by adding didactic remarks
concerning the science and daring of medieval builders and the value of
the gothic narrated 181
learning from them. He digresses often into lengthy arguments defending
the value of Gothic revivalism for the nineteenth century. These excursuses
into debates concerning contemporary practice, wisely published as separate
articles by Didron, were in fact written as part of the main text in the
manuscript version. We are thus far from the type of narrative histories in
which a gripping tale unfolds before our eyes. Yet the spirit that adheres to
his account of the emergence of Gothic is of a narrative kind. The exhaustive
and often tedious taxonomic descriptions of de Caumont give way to a series
of chronologized construction events that are tied to one another by the force
of a teleological development. Unlike de Caumont’s obsessive collection of
details, Viollet-le-Duc has no qualms about leaving out many aspects, as not
everything is immediately relevant to the development of the story. Yet he
also avoids what White called “the embarrassment of plot,” the abstraction
of a metanarrative that floats high above the material like the histories
constructed by Lenoir and particularly by Reynaud. Viollet-le-Duc’s account
is the product of the mason’s confrontation with a concrete construction
problem in the making of a vaulted church. Construction processes are easily
subject to “empathetic” perception: we witness an action made in relation
to others that have taken place before and after, and are thus led to follow a
development in time through gestures. However fragmented Viollet-le-Duc’s
récit, it is organized, at least implicitly, as if the characters—in this case the
medieval masons—were themselves relating the story: we read it through
them. That Viollet-le-Duc himself had confronted the same kind of problems
in his restoration of Vézelay (a church that was prominent in his account)
only adds support to our claim that his structural account of the Gothic is the
expression of a quasi-identificatory responsiveness. The organic metaphor,
with which his text is discreetly suffused, comes as an aid for that kind of
corporeal identification.56
Notes
1
Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction des édifices religieux en France depuis le
commencement du christianisme jusqu’au XVIe siècle,” Annales archéologiques,
hereafter AA, 1 (1844): 179–86; 2 (1845): 78–85; 3 (1845): 321–36; 4 (1846): 266–83;
6 (1847): 194–205, and 247–55.
2
Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 1 (1844): 179.
3
Viollet-le-Duc, “De l’art étranger et l’art national,” AA 2 (1845): 288.
4
“Ces secondes pousses, … n’ont jamais la vigueur, la sève des premières; elles
sont souvent pales et étiolées. Mais enfin ce sont encore les rejetons d’une
bonne souche, et il faut bien se garder de les dédaigner,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la
construction,” AA 1 (1844): 179.
5
“Cette petite troupe de savants et d’artistes [soumis à l’archéologie] qui
cherchent à retrouver les arts si splendide de nos pères, à renouer le fil cassé
par les XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 1
(1844): 180.
182 architecture and the historical imagination
6
Roland Barthes, “The Discourse of History,” trans. Stephen Bann, Comparative
Criticism 3 (1981): 7–20.
7
“Les systèmes philosophiques, ainsi que les systèmes politiques, sont rangés par
couches successives comme nous voyons les bancs qui composent notre globe
entassés les uns sur les autres, enfouis et oubliés. Ces idées antiques n’occupent
plus, comme la matière antédiluvienne, que quelques savants,” Viollet-le-Duc,
“De la construction,” AA 3 (1845), 328.
8
“Ne disons pas que [cette petite troupe de savants et d’artistes qui cherchent à
retrouver les arts si splendide de nos pères] … veulent nous faire rétrograder,
mais bien qu’ils veulent reprendre le vrai chemin qu’on n’aurait jamais dû
abandonner,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 1 (1844): 180.
9
“Nous sommes chrétiens aujourd’hui comme au XIIIe siècle, nous sommes
animés par le même esprit. Notre religion, qui est la base de notre civilisation,
… est aussi jeune qu’en 1200,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 3 (1845):
328.
10
Abbé Louis-Eugène-Marie Bautain, Psychologie expérimentale, 2 vols. (Strasbourg:
Derivaux, 1839), vol. 1, 303.
11
“Il y a une science et un art inconnus jusqu’alors et perdus aujourd’hui,” Violletle-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 2 (1845): 145.
12
“Les architectes du XIIIe siècle savaient construire mieux que leurs
prédécesseurs, mieux que leurs successeurs,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la
construction,” AA 3 (1845): 328.
13
“Voir s’élever des monuments dans un nouveau style d’architecture,” Viollet-leDuc, “De la construction,” AA 1 (1844): 185.
14
“Pourquoi? Il n’entre pas dans notre sujet d’en chercher la cause; nous nous
bornerons à en signaler les effets,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 1
(1844): 184.
15
“Dans les cathédrales de France [du 13e siècle] c’est le système de la VOÛTE qui
est seul employé, c’est son application la plus étendue, la plus vrai,” Viollet-leDuc, “De la construction,” AA 2 (1845): 79.
16
“Chaque morceau de pierre est achevé avant d’être posé; il vient se ranger à sa
place pour ne plus être touché par l’outil de l’ouvrier,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la
construction,” AA 1 (1844): 186.
17
See the testimony of his student Eugène Millet in Henry Labrouste (Paris: Marpon
et Flammarion, 1881), 10.
18
“Vous ne trouveriez pas, dans toutes ces grandes constructions faites pour
contenir des populations entières, une pierre inutile; tout, comme dans l’œuvre
divine, y a sa place et son rôle. Enlevez une parcelle, vous détruisez l’ensemble,”
Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 1 (1844): 181.
19
“Déjà les églises du XIe siècle présentent cette ossature vigoureuse, qui, allégée
et mieux étudiée, devait amener les plus belles combinaisons architectoniques.
Les arcs-doubleaux, indépendant des voûtes, leur donnent du nerf et de la force
sans les alourdir,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 1 (1844): 186.
20
“Le XIe siècle commence à pratiquer aussi ce mode de construction élastique …
que le XIIIe a perfectionné d’une manière si extraordinaire,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De
la construction,” AA 1 (1844): 186.
the gothic narrated 183
21
“Dans le narthex de Vézelay, supprimons les voûtes des galeries et ne laissons
que les petits arcs-doubleaux qui contre-butent les grands; établissons un toit sur
le bas-côté, ouvrons des fenêtres sous les formerets de la grande voûte, et nous
avons résolu le problème de maintenir les voûtes des grandes nefs sur des murs
minces, et de les éclairer par des jours directs, ouverts dans ces murs au-dessus
des bas-côtés,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 2 (1845): 145.
22
“Les conséquences de ce nouveau système furent telles qu’en moins de
cinquante ans l’architecture gothique prit son développement, arriva à sa plus
grande perfection,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 2 (1845): 145.
23
“Le motif d’une admirable décoration,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA
2 (1845): 340.
24
See Robin Middleton, “Viollet-le-Duc and the Rational Gothic Tradition,”
PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1958, and his classic book-length article,
“The Abbé de Cordemoy and the Graeco-Gothic Ideal: A Prelude to Romantic
Classicism,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, hereafter JWCI, XXV
(1962): 278–320 and XXVI (1963): 90–123. See also the more recent summary in
Middleton and Marie-Noëlle Baudouin-Matuszek’s Jean Rondelet: The Architect
as Technician (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press: 2007),
22–30.
25
Pierre Patte, in Jacques-François Blondel, Cours d’architecture, 6 vols. (Paris:
Desaint, 1771–1777), vol. 6 (1777), 206–222 and plates CX and CXI.
26
Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy and the Graeco-Gothic Ideal: A Prelude to
Romantic Classicism,” JWCI XXVI (1963), 113.
27
Blondel, Cours d’architecture, vol. 6, 221.
28
Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy and the Graeco-Gothic Ideal,” JWCI XXVI
(1963), 113.
29
In a rare acknowledgement of sources, Viollet-le-Duc admits his debt to Frémin
in Annales archéologiques. See his “De l’art étranger et l’art national,” AA 2 (1845):
289.
30
See, for example: Johann Claudius von Lassaulx’s “Beschreibung des
Verfahrens bei Anfertigung leichter Gewölbe über Kirchen und ähnlichen
Räumen,” Journal für die Baukunst 1 (1829): 317– 330; William Whewell,
Architectural Notes on German Churches (Cambridge: Deighton, 1830; with later
editions in 1835 and 1842); Ludwig Friedrich Wolfram, Vollständiges Lehrbuch
der gesamten Baukunst, vol. 3, Lehere von den Hochgebäuden (Stuttgart: Hoffman
and Vienna: Gerold, 1838); and Robert Willis, “On the Construction of the
Vaults of the Middle Ages,” Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects
1 (1842): 1–69.
31
Johann Claudius von Lassaulx published his essay on the medieval procedure
to make light vaults over churches in 1833 in the Journal du génie civil; see David
Wendland, “A Case of Recovery of a Medieval Vaulting Technique in the 19th
Century: Lassaulx’s Vault in the Church of Treis,” in Proceedings of the First
International Congress on Construction History, ed. Santiago Huerta (Madrid:
Instituto Juan de Herrera, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, 2003),
2107–2117. Viollet-le-Duc refers negatively to Lassaulx’s built work in “De la
construction,” AA 6 (1847): 194–195. Robert Willis’s essay on Gothic construction
was published as “Mémoire de M. Willis sur la construction des voûtes au
moyen âge,” in Revue général de l’architecture et des travaux publics, hereafter
RGATP, 4 (1843): cols. 3–14, 289–304, 481–507 and 529–537.
184 architecture and the historical imagination
32
In the original French: “Le problème de l’ogive ne saurait être posé in abstracto,
d’après l’ogive ‘en soi’, avec quelques rapides concessions sur des formes
primitives. Il doit suivre la courbe de l’évolution, il est dans le temps, il se
modèle sur des expériences successives. J’ajoute, avec l’intention d’y revenir, que
le constructeur de 1134 ne sait, ne procède ni ne raisonne comme le constructeur
de 1934 et que, si nous voulons bien saisir le sens et la portée de ce qui nous
occupe, notre problème est, dans une large mesure, un problème de restitution
intellectuelle. Penser comme l’artiste, voilà la règle de notre recherche [my emphasis].
Or, il ne pense pas une fois pour toutes. Il cherche, il invente, il adapte, il
améliore, il se trompe. Certaines formes inaptes à la vie sont abandonnées
après des tâtonnements, tandis que d’autres suivent leur élan vigoureux. Le
problème de l’ogive est donc double. Il est historique et constructif à la fois.”
Henri Focillon, “Le problème de l’ogive,” first published in the Bulletin de l’Office
des Instituts d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art 3 (1935). I consulted the article in
the more recent Henri Focillon, Moyen âge: Survivances et réveils, Études d’art et
d’histoire (Montréal: Brentano, 1943), 110.
33
Studies on the new attitudes of architects toward history include the following:
Neil Levine, “Architectural Reasoning in the Age of Positivism: The NeoGrec Idea of Henri-Labrouste’s Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève,” PhD diss.,
Yale University, 1975; Robin Middleton, “The Rationalist Interpretations of
Classicism of Léonce Reynaud and Viollet-le-Duc,” AA Files 11 (Spring 1986):
29–48; David Van Zanten, Designing Paris: The Architecture of Duban, Labrouste,
Duc, and Vaudoyer (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1987); Barry Bergdoll,
Léon Vaudoyer: Historicism in the Age of Industry (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT
Press, 1994); Martin Bressani, “Science, histoire et archéologie. Sources et
généalogie de la pensée organiciste de Viollet-le-Duc,” PhD diss., Université
de Paris-Sorbonne, 1997; Martin Bressani, “The Hybrid: Labrouste’s Paestum,”
Chora 5 (2007): 81–126.
34
See Levine, “Architectural Reasoning in the Age of Positivism,” and Bergdoll,
Léon Vaudoyer.
35
See Bressani, “The Hybrid: Labrouste’s Paestum.”
36
Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,”
Critical Inquiry 7 (Fall 1980): 10.
37
White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” 8–9.
38
Arcisse de Caumont, “Essai sur l’architecture religieuse du moyen âge,
particulièrement en Normandie; communiqué à la Société d’émulation de
Caen, en décembre 1823,” Mémoires de la Société des antiquaires de Normandie
1 (1824): 535–677. See the good, synthetic exposition of de Caumont’s
archaeological methods by Jean Nayrolles, “Sciences naturelles et
archéologie médiévale au XIXe siècle,” in Loyer, L’architecture, les sciences et
la culture de l’histoire au 19e siècle (Saint-Étienne: Université de Saint-Étienne,
2001), 25–49.
39
Arcisse de Caumont, “Essai sur l’architecture religieuse du moyen âge,
particulièrement en Normandie,” 603. On this subject, see Elisabeth Williams’s
very useful “The Perception of Romanesque Art in the Romantic Period:
Archaeological Attitudes in France in the 1820s and 1830s,” Forum for Modern
Langauge Studies 21 (1985): 303–321.
40
Augustin Thierry, The Formation and Progress of the Tiers État, trans. Rev. F. B.
Wells (London: Bohn, 1859), 81; quoted in Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the
Rise of History, 27.
the gothic narrated 185
41
Bressani, “Science, histoire et archéologie. Sources et généalogie de la pensée
organiciste de Viollet-le-Duc,” 129–403.
42
“L’archéologie est redevenue en quelque sorte ce qu’elle était du temps de Denys
d’Halicarnasse, la science des origines,” Charles Lenormant, “Archéologie,” Revue
archéologique 1 (1844): 5–17. Published as the opening essay in the inaugural
issue of Revue archéologique, it had appeared two years earlier in the Encyclopédie
du dix-neuvième siècle. I quote from the collected essays of Charles Lenormant,
Beaux-Arts et voyages (Paris: Lévy, 1861), 440.
43
“Rechercher par tous les moyens la liaison première, intime, qui a dû joindre la
civilisation de l’Occident à la civilisation orientale,” Charles Lenormant, “Les
Phéniciens,” Revue française 4 (1837): 240–241.
44
Albert Lenoir and Léon Vaudoyer, “Études historiques sur les principaux
caractères de l’architecture en France et en Italie, depuis le IVe siècle de notre ère
jusqu’au XIIIe,” March 31, 1834, ms. Institut de France, Archives de l’Académie
des Inscriptions et des Belles Lettres, 3 h 52; see Bergdoll, Léon Vaudoyer, 122–123.
45
Charles Lenormant, “Fragment d’une lettre sur l’origine de l’ogive et sur
l’architecture dite Byzantine,” Revue normande 2 (1833): 1–10.
46
Arcisse de Caumont, Cours d’antiquités monumentales professé à Caen en 1830.
Histoire de l’art dans l’ouest de la France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’au
XVIIIe siècle, 12 vols. (Paris: Lance; Caen: Chalopin; Rouen: Edouard Frère,
1830–1843), vol. 4, 42.
47
De Caumont, Cours d’antiquités monumentales professé à Caen en 1830, vol. 1,
1830, 16.
48
“D’ailleurs en archéologie, comme dans bien des sciences, les meilleures
méthodes de classification reposent nécessairement sur des abstractions
diversement graduées. Il n’est pas aisé de circonscrire absolument les limites
temporelles dans lesquelles on doit renfermer le règne de tel ou tel style
d’architecture,” de Caumont, Cours d’antiquités monumentales professé à Caen en
1830, vol. 4, 1833, 47–48.
49
Nayrolles, “Sciences naturelles et archéologie médiévale au XIXe siècle,” 33.
50
Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 1 (1844): 184.
51
“N’a été imité que dans une faible partie de la France,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la
construction,” AA 1 (1844): 183.
52
“Comment expliquer que ce mode de construction, adopté à Périgueux, à
Cahors, à Souillac et dans quelques autres monuments, depuis le IXe jusqu’au
XIe siècle, soit, pour ainsi dire, resté oublié dans un coin de la France pendant
cinq siècles? À moins d’admettre cette résolution … de rompre entièrement avec
la tradition romaine,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA 1 (1844): 183.
53
See Ludovic Vitet, Rapport à M. le Ministre de l’Intérieur sur les monuments (Paris:
Imprimerie royale, 1831).
54
“Les systèmes philosophiques, ainsi que les systèmes politiques, sont rangés
par couches successives comme nous voyons les bancs qui composent notre
globe entassés les uns sur les autres, enfouis et oubliés,” Viollet-le-Duc, “De la
construction,” AA 3 (1845): 328.
55
“C’est un fait de l’histoire de l’architecture, très-curieux à étudier, que cette
transition presque insensible de l’art romain à l’art des XIIe et XIIIe siècle,”
Viollet-le-Duc, “De la construction,” AA, vol. 1, 1844, 181.
186 architecture and the historical imagination
56
The term “elasticity,” which is used throughout Viollet-le-Duc’s account of
Gothic construction in an inexplicable manner, is particularly indicative:
Gothic churches, claims Viollet-le-Duc, have a “vigorous skeleton” endowed
with “elasticity.” A characteristic of living tissues that denotes flexibility and
health, “elasticity” is a particularly efficient term for rendering a strong image
of dynamism and resilience very much in the spirit of Viollet-le-Duc’s whole
enterprise. The term is thus used loosely and metaphorically, to give the
impression that matter is possessed with an interior energy, a life and movement
of its own. “Within Gothic buildings, everything is equilibrium and movement,”
he would write in the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au
XVIe siècle, 10 vols. (Paris: B. Bance and A. Morel, 1854–1868), vol. 1, 87. The
theme of elasticity and equilibrium were current in developments in materials
science. But Viollet-le-Duc had only a dim awareness of these developments in
engineering. Nowhere in the vast corpus of his writings on the architecture of
the Middle Ages is there any concrete reference to the science of engineering
as it was practiced as his time. But the Neoclassical interpretation of Gothic
construction on which he drew integrated the principle of equilibrium and the
organic metaphor. In his defense of the structure of Jacques-Germain Soufflot’s
Church of Sainte-Geneviève in 1770, Jean-Rodolphe Perronet argued his point,
drawing a comparison with Gothic churches, whose construction followed,
he claimed, “the laws of equilibrium,” implementing a delicate counterpoise
of thrusts that brought into play the “balance of forces in action” [rapport des
puissances agissantes]. Perronet had eloquently supplemented his account with
a comparison: “The magic of [Gothic] buildings consists principally in their
construction being in the image of the structure of animals: the delicate columns,
the transverse ribs … could be compared to their bones, and the [thin vault
made of] stones and voussoirs, to the flesh,” Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, Mercure
de France (April 1770); quoted without precise reference in Mae Mathieu, Pierre
Patte, sa vie son œuvre (Paris: Alcan, Presses universitaires de France, 1940),
399–400; also quoted in Middleton, “The Graeco-Gothic Ideal,” JWCI XXVI
(1963), 110–111. That metaphor resurfaced in the nineteenth century in the
late writings of another Neoclassicist, the rich and eccentric British collector
Thomas Hope. Well acquainted with the French Neoclassical scene through
his friendship with Percier and Fontaine and his frequent visits to the French
capital, Hope had written late in life, probably in the 1820s, a surprising book,
a world architectural history modestly titled An Historical Essay on Architecture,
published posthumously by his son (London: J. Murray, 1835). There is no
need to dwell on Hope’s account of the Gothic, since it takes up the familiar
Neoclassical structural interpretation, notwithstanding a few variations. For our
present purpose, I simply wish to point out that organic analogies dominated
his account, giving the reader the sense “that a secret was lost that needed to
be retrieved,” as remarked a Saint-Simonian scientist in the 1840s; see CharlesÉtienne Guillery, Lettres sur l’architecture (Brussels: F. Parent, 1845–1848), 18.
In fact, the organic image is used in ways similar to Perronet’s approach: the
structure of a Gothic church was “like the carcasses of vertebrate animals, those
various parts necessary for the general substance and stability of the body—the
bones, and ribs, and spine—were moulded into slight [slender?] masses, distant
from each other, and left between them intervals filled in with yielding flesh and
thin integuments,” Hope, An Historical Essay on Architecture, 349–350. Hope’s
Historical Essay on Architecture was very quickly translated into French in 1839,
and seems to have enjoyed wide circulation in circles around the Commission
des monuments historiques and among Saint-Simonians. Its translator was
Auguste Baron, a Belgian who had moved to Paris early on, graduated from
the École normale in 1812, and moved in the literary circles around Le Globe,
the gothic narrated 187
to which he contributed. Baron wrote an introduction to Hope’s history that
is quite lyrical, putting the reader in a state of anticipation of the history of
Gothic architecture: “In the midst of darkness and the bloody struggles of the
Middle Ages, a holy and venerable corporation, the Freemasons, fed the sacred
fire of art under the ashes of its mysteries … the ogive will forever summarize
European civilization,” Thomas Hope, Histoire de l’architecture (Brussels: Meline,
Cans et Cie., 1839), vol. 1, v. Baron translated Hope’s “yielding flesh” as “chair
élastique,” Hope, Histoire de l’architecture, 313. In Hope’s interpretation, it is of
course the infill that is elastic, not the skeletal structure. Viollet-le-Duc owned
a copy of Baron’s translation of Hope, which he placed in a very prominent
position in his library, but it was acquired after 1852.
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Part III
The Gothic Disseminated
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6
Toward Empire
Identification Works
Viollet-le-Duc’s contribution to Adolphe-Napoléon Didron’s Annales
archéologiques progressively slackened from 1847 on. His serial article “De la
construction des édifices religieux en France” concluded in May of that year,
leaving his account of church construction in the Middle Ages incomplete.1
He would return to publish three brief articles, the last appearing in the
March–April issue of 1849. Sometime around the middle of 1847, César Daly
commented that the “seeds of discord” were growing within Didron’s circle.2
In his letter to subscribers at the end of 1848, Didron still included Violletle-Duc as a future contributor,3 but at the end of 1849 his name disappeared
altogether. No other text by Viollet-le-Duc would be published in that leading
journal of medieval archaeology during its remaining 20 years.
The moment of Viollet-le-Duc’s disengagement from Didron’s circle
corresponds with the changing political climate leading to the February
1848 Revolution. The atmosphere of impending revolt palpable in 1847 with
the food crisis, famine, successive riots in Paris and the provinces, followed
by the famous campagne des banquets, whereby “private” dinners were coopted for political meetings. All this must have cast a whole new light on the
Gothic controversy. Even if his authority as the leading restoration architect,
alongside Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus, was never questioned throughout
the debate, Viollet-le-Duc would have found the accusations of being a
rearguard sectarian, or a mere “specialist” of the Gothic increasingly vexing,
at a time when French society as a whole seemed eager to push forward. In
“L’architecture contemporaine et le style gothique,” Gabriel Laviron ended
his critique of the revivalists by suggesting that Viollet-le-Duc (and Lassus)
will come to regret “having been carried away, in the fervor of their archaic
zeal, making overtly eccentric statements.”4 He was certainly right in the case
of Viollet-le-Duc, who would soon sense the need to translate his revivalist
stance into a more flexible strategy. Didron, in contrast, remained steadfast.
In an editorial note following the events of February 1848 titled “L’archéologie
sous la République,” he merely restated his desire to have national archaeology
192 architecture and the historical imagination
integrated in the school curricula across the nation.5 In so doing, he could not
refrain from expressing his skepticism about the new republican regime. To
his great frustration, he became increasingly marginalized in the circles of
patrimonial institutions in France.6
As Viollet-le-Duc loosened his ties to Annales archéologique and Didron, he
seems to have strengthened those with Prosper Mérimée. His relationship
with the latter had evolved considerably since 1840, when the young architect
had been handpicked by the Inspecteur général of the Commission des
monuments historiques to work on Vézelay. In the first years of that project,
Mérimée remained Viollet-le-Duc’s key advisor and mentor, acting as his
intermediary with the Commission. Though Viollet-le-Duc was no novice in
medieval studies, it is safe to assume that Mérimée provided a consolidation
of that knowledge given his unique empirical grasp of the field, his refined
sensibility, and his concise synthetic mind. After spending long missions
touring France together in 1843 and 1844, the seed of a true friendship was
planted. From family correspondence, we get a sense of the extent to which
Viollet-le-Duc fell under the spell of Mérimée. In September 1844, he wrote to
his wife:
It is difficult for individuals like us [himself and Mérimée], separated by ten years of
age, living in different circles, to strike one of those friendships that usually form only
in early youth; but there is also great pleasure in seeing, despite these differences, a
friendship develop cautiously through a thousand trials. If we can travel a bit longer
together, I believe we will be true friends.7
A lasting bond was indeed forged, Mérimée becoming Viollet-le-Duc’s
lifelong friend and ally, in fact, his closest confidant. Their relationship started
as a form of mentorship, but free of the viciousness that had characterized
Viollet-le-Duc’s experience with his uncle Étienne Delécluze. Mérimée was
the very opposite of the latter: concise, witty, unencumbered by rote opinion,
and profoundly against any form of pomposity and sentimentalism. And
unlike Delécluze, he was extremely successful in his literary and scholarly
career, elected in 1844 to both the Académie des Inscriptions et des BellesLettres and the Académie Française. With the publication of Colomba and
Carmen during that decade, Mérimée’s literary reputation reached its zenith.
His work in medieval archaeology was equally successful. Inspecteur général
of the Commission des monuments historiques since 1834, he stood at the
center of the new patrimonial institutions, a position of influence which, as we
know, was very profitable to Viollet-le-Duc. Mérimée stood behind the two
commissions that launched the latter’s career: Vézelay and Notre-Dame. In
the following years, Mérimée would recommend Viollet-le-Duc for a series of
other important commissions, such as the restoration of the Basilica of SaintNazaire and Saint-Celse at Carcassonne (1844), the Basilica of Saint-Sernin in
Toulouse (1845) and the Basilica of Saint-Denis (1846).
Viollet-le-Duc’s growing friendship with Mérimée did not, however,
imply a complete merging of opinions. In her excellent comparative study of
toward empire 193
Mérimée and Viollet-le-Duc’s ideas on restoration, Elisabeth Wolstenholme
notes how Viollet-le-Duc reacted with increasing indifference to Mérimée’s
criticism after 1844.8 As Viollet-le-Duc grew more and more confident in his
abilities as practitioner, Mérimée increasingly seemed the dilettante. Soon,
it was Mérimée who relied on Viollet-le-Duc when it came to questions of
restoration. Mérimée greatly admired Viollet-le-Duc’s resourcefulness and
his capacity for action, and in the end, granted him the greatest license in
his restoration. However, the two men parted company over the question
of reviving Gothic in the nineteenth century. If Mérimée understood the
benefit of learning from medieval architecture, he had no interest in seeing
new churches built in that style. In particular, he had no patience for Didron
and the militant enthusiasm for l’art chrétien. So, for a time, during the mid1840s, Viollet-le-Duc navigated between two disparate poles within the field
of medieval archaeology: the measured empiricism of Mérimée on the one
hand, and the militant and “apostolic” archaeology of the group associated
with Annales archéologiques on the other. Following the controversy of 1846
and especially after the fall of the July Monarchy, Mérimée’s influence
would gain the upper hand. Viollet-le-Duc never lost the combative attitude
he picked up from Didron, but he would move away from any form of
sectarianism.
His increasing closeness to Mérimée was concretized when they moved into
the same neighborhood in 1848. With the fall of the July Monarchy, Violletle-Duc’s father Emmanuel lost his job as manager of the royal residences and
had to abandon his apartment on rue de Rivoli (a dependency of the Tuileries
Palace), where he had lived with his son’s family since 1837. He moved to 77
rue Blanche in the ninth arrondissement, a building he owned jointly with
his two sons.9 At that juncture, Eugène-Emmanuel chose not to follow his
father, and moved instead to the left bank, to 9 rue de Verneuil, a few blocks
away from Mérimée, who had just settled himself at 18 rue Jacob. Mérimée
and Viollet-le-Duc continued to travel together, to England in May 185010—
just missing the start of construction on the Crystal Palace, but visiting many
key Gothic sites and consulting the seventeenth-century drawings of French
medieval monuments by François Roger de Gaignières in Oxford—and to
Germany in 1854. In 1852, after his mother passed away, Mérimée moved
even closer to Viollet-le-Duc, to rue de Lille. The two would remain neighbors
until Viollet-le-Duc moved to the house he built for himself on rue de Laval
(now Condorcet) in 1863.
The importance of these changes should not be underestimated. Putting
behind him the benevolent and nurturing presence of his father and the NeoCatholic clan while getting closer to Mérimée—famous for his skepticism and
dry wit—signaled an important transformation in Viollet-le-Duc’s mindset.
His adoption of an anti-clerical position probably dates from that period. If the
events of 1848 ushered in the hope of a reconciliation between Catholics and
the ideals of the revolution, the conservative wing of the Catholic party would
soon organize its opposition and steer the whole clergy toward a rigid position,
194 architecture and the historical imagination
which Viollet-le-Duc strongly criticized. He was in particular revolted by the
petty maneuvering of the clergy.11 We can also safely assume that his anticlerical stance signaled a progressive shift toward what has often been labeled
his “atheism,” though in reality Viollet-le-Duc always maintained a sense
of the sacred and mostly rejected sentimentalized religiosity. After all, the
bloody horrors of 1848—in some ways worse than the terror of 1792–1794—
would put to the test anyone’s belief in a benevolent providence. Appalled
by that violence, Viollet-le-Duc described the rebels as “an organized band of
looters” or “barbarians coming from inside.”12 He would witness first-hand
what Mérimée had described in so many of his novels and short stories: the
very thin line that separates savagery from civilization. Mérimée’s celebration
of primitive instinct, his fascination with savagery, his Schopenhauerian
pessimism, must have suddenly appeared much more apposite than any
brand of Neo-Catholic utopianism. And indeed, from then on, Viollet-le-Duc
integrated violence and warfare as key vectors in his historical thinking. This
is also the juncture at which he adopted a secular interpretation of the Gothic
with which he is so naturally associated. According to a reading inspired by
liberal historians and first articulated in the 1830s by the Globistes Ludovic
Vitet and Charles Magnin, the great cathedrals of France were not primarily
the product of religious fervor, but an expression of the freedom of a new
urban population emancipated from feudal rule and monastic dogmatism.
The victory of the Gothic over the Romanesque symbolized the liberation of
the bourgeoisie from oppression, marking the first stage in the progressive
secularization of French society. That thesis would be central to all of Violletle-Duc’s future writings. From this point on, instead of quoting Joseph de
Maistre, he will cite liberal historians such as François Guizot and Augustin
Thierry. Instead of praising the appropriateness of the Gothic for Catholicism,
he will describe the cathedral as a civic monument. And instead of restricting
himself to a small cénacle, he will enter public service, taking the opportunity
of regime change to consolidate his position within France’s patrimonial
institutions.
Thus, 1848 marks the crucial turning point when Viollet-le-Duc’s originally
private relationship with medieval monuments begins to embrace an
increasingly wider horizon, as if his libidinal economy was able to fuse tightly
with the political in his ongoing process of identification with the medieval
past. It was an aggrandizement of the vision, nourished by a desire for
mastery. That expansion is, of course, inherent to a process of identification
established on a melancholic basis, in other words when identification is
predicated upon loss: it is but a constant process of “restoration” that can
never retrieve the lost object except in the half-life of a ghost. Viollet-le-Duc’s
first “antiquarian” relation to the past, itself already heavily invested in a
reparative fantasy, now expands into the mobilization of a whole political
force: not only must individual historical monuments be nursed and restored,
but the whole country’s architectural apparatus must be awakened to its
proper Gothic self. From a delimited set of historical forms, Gothic is now
toward empire 195
understood as a specific type of “rational” practice that adheres to the French
national spirit. The driving element here is the antagonistic character of the
operation: destroying France’s current Beaux-Arts architectural practice
through the unearthing of the Gothic ghost. Restoration then becomes a form
of siege warfare over the whole nation.
Notwithstanding his continued involvement in specific restoration
works, among which the extravagant reconstruction of military structures
at Carcassone and Pierrefonds will be most iconic, the setting of general
architectural policies for restoration work constitutes the distinguishing
aspect of Viollet-le-Duc’s career after 1848. His influence with Lassus
within patrimonial institutions was, of course, already significant by the
final years of the July Monarchy. Jean-Michel Leniaud makes the very
important point that the restoration of Notre-Dame had a fundamental
impact on the establishment of new working methods for the restoration of
medieval buildings in nineteenth-century France, including the prescription
for meticulous documentation through the use of measured drawings and
daguerreotypes and the articulation of clear deontological principles upon
which to base design decisions.13 But it is only after 1848 that Viollet-le-Duc,
in tandem with Mérimée, would set official norms for future restoration
work. It was the desire for such practical instructions that would form, as we
shall see later, the most immediate background for Viollet-le-Duc’s magnum
opus, the ten-volume Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au
XVIe siècle.
The evolution of his thought was, of course, not solely the product of his
own private urges. It was also a reaction to the radical change brought about
with the advent of the short-lived, but crucial Second Republic: with LouisPhilippe’s departure into exile, the French monarchy had rendered its last
breath, the principle of popular sovereignty becoming the new foundation
of French political life. The declaration of the Second Empire in 1852 will
change nothing for that new reality: the principle of nationality rather than
the principle of legitimacy would constitute the true instrument of power.
Viollet-le-Duc’s new modus operandi after 1848 perfectly reflects the new
political orientation. Instead of devoting his energy solely to the restoration
of a few key symbolic monuments such as Sainte-Chapelle or Notre-Dame,
he will craft centralizing architectural policies to insure the national reach
of his archaeological doctrine. Thanks to Mérimée, who was himself very
anxious after the debacle of February 1848 to maintain his prominence
in the administration of historical monuments, he was able to maneuver
actively within the provisional government to insure both the legitimacy
and controlling power of existing patrimonial institutions and his own and
Mérimée’s position within them. Not only did the two men consolidate their
influence in the Commission des monuments historiques, but they were
able to penetrate deeply within the Direction des cultes and re-organize the
Service des édifices diocésains, the government office regulating all new
construction and restoration of buildings serving the bishop or archbishop
196 architecture and the historical imagination
in the dioceses of France: cathedrals, bishops’ palaces, and seminaries.
Thanks in part to the political skills of Mérimée, Viollet-le-Duc will be
able to completely reform the Service des édifices diocésains, originally
established in 1830 but without real executive power until 1848. Viollet-leDuc’s ultimate aim was to transform the body of Architectes diocésains into a
medievalist phalange which would reform architecture across the country.
His effort dovetailed perfectly with the larger political endeavour to make
France a nation state through institutions capable of imposing uniformity
across the whole territory.
Thanks to Leniaud’s scrupulous archival research, we now know the
finer details of this important set of reforms.14 Mérimée and Viollet-leDuc’s first successful action was finally to abolish the supervisory role of
the Conseil des bâtiments civils over religious buildings, a control that had
much irritated the Commission des monuments historiques all through the
July Monarchy. The change was made possible by the close collaboration
of the new and skillful Directeur des cultes, Jean-Louis Eugéne Durieu. But
the rapidity with which the reforms were implemented reflected a more
general political will, no doubt sparked by the nationalist and religious
fervour that animated the rhetoric of revolution in 1848.15 Images from the
gospels were associated with patriotic symbols in the establishment of the
Second Republic. For a brief period around May, Buchez was even named
president of the Assemblée constituante, which was a clear sign that the
Neo-Catholic efforts at reconciling Christianity with the revolution had, in
some sense, borne its fruit.16 By the same token, the fact that this leading
ideologist of the Neo-Gothic movement acceded to such a key political
position shows how auspicious was the moment to push long-awaited
reforms in patrimonial institutions. As already mentioned, the situation
was, of course, volatile, with an anxious conservative faction fighting to
regain control. In the end, Buchez was president for a mere few weeks.
But it remained a favorable moment for the cathedrals of France, for both
political and economic reasons.
Contrary to common opinion, the consolidation of restoration activities
in France dates from 1848 rather than the beginning of the July Monarchy.
The patrimonial institutions under Guizot’s direction lacked administrative
unity and their budgets varied a lot from year to year. Following the
administrative restructuring of 1848 and especially the unprecedented
economic growth after 1850, everything became easier.17 Industrial
production was, of course, at the centre of the new wealth, but largescale building projects were a significant means of fostering economical
development. The transformation of Paris by Haussmann, begun at the
onset of the Second Empire, is the most famous manifestation of an economy
oriented toward the construction industry. Diocesan works were obviously
of a less spectacular nature than the Haussmannian rebuilding effort; but
they remained a component of economical development. Leniaud quotes
an 1852 report by the Directeur des cultes to the Ministre:
toward empire 197
The cathedral works are no less advantageous from a material and economic point
of view than from a religious and moral one; because, while they foster a spiritual
union around the common goal of the most noble sacrifices, they provide bread and
employment to the working class, a provision carried out with the assistance of the
upper classes.
The report goes on to suggest that restoring cathedrals is the proper means
to build between the working and the upper classes, and between them and
the state, “great and holy relations of mutual support, of reciprocal assistance
and true fraternity.”18 Such mobilization, already well initiated during the
Second Republic, provided a significant political and ideological context that
Mérimée and Viollet-le-Duc would exploit. In a letter probably addressed
to his friend Antonio Panizzi, chief librarian and later director of the British
Museum, Mérimée actually emphasized the usefulness of restoration work to
prevent construction workers from hatching rebellious thoughts:
What the typical French [construction] worker hates above all else, is monotonous
labour. He enjoys having to do something he has never done before, even if it means
confronting difficulties. In works carried out by the [Commission des] monuments
historiques, for instance, we often see men ready to receive a lesser salary … only for
the pleasure of having to do things that have the reputation of being extraordinary
and difficult. We have noticed that the workers who are thus taken by their work
never take part in riots. The interest they take in their daily work distracts and
amuses them. If they are left idle, their mind turns to evil thoughts.19
The verve and vitality of French workers must be channeled toward constructive
ends rather than rebellious ones. Mérimée’s comment corresponds closely
to the reality of nineteenth-century France, where masons formed the most
significant segment of the rebellious groups building barricades.20 It is well
known how Haussmann’s new Parisian boulevards were both an economic
and a strategic transformation, allowing goods and military troops to move
unencumbered through the capital. It was also a means of keeping turbulent
groups of masons employed. The same logic was used by Mérimée to justify
restoration work, though with a slightly more Rabelaisian twist.
Radical changes in the Service des édifices diocésains pushed by Mérimée
and Viollet-le-duc followed quickly upon the events of late February 1848. In
March 1848, the Administration des Cultes set up a Commission des édifices
religieux to oversee the attribution of funds and to control the technical and
aesthetic quality of all projects related to ecclesiastical buildings.21 It was
an efficient, “republican” commission finally liberated from the “rearguard
Neoclassicists” that had plagued the Conseil des bâtiments civils. Durieu
chaired that company of architects (Duban, Labrouste, Vaudoyer and Violletle-Duc). Fortoul and Mérimée were also members of the new Commission,
and Alfred Blanche served as secretary.22 In December, the Commission was
expanded into a four-section Commission des arts et édifices religieux, an
organism whose wider mandate covered all material and artistic aspects of
the Catholic cult in France. The architecture and sculpture section included
198 architecture and the historical imagination
all the members of the previous Commission des édifices religieux with
additional members drawn in large part from the clergy. But from Leniaud’s
research, we learn that those who assiduously attended the meetings were
mostly Viollet-le-Duc, Vaudoyer, and Labrouste (Mérimée to a lesser extent).
It is fascinating to see the three architects, among the most prominent figures
in the history of French nineteenth-century architecture, being positioned to
control all works on ecclesiastical buildings, including the naming of technical
personnel in charge of new constructions and restorations. In the past, that
privilege had been left to the local préfet. But the fundamental idea underlying
all of the reforms of 1848 was centralization, a conception of government that
of course maintained itself after the advent of the Second Empire established
in December 1852. In the face of obvious inefficiencies in the system, some
adjustments would eventually be made.23 For example, a statutory order was
issued on March 7, 1853 that returned to the préfets the right to commission
architects for regular maintenance works. But generally, the new regulation
reinforced centralization, and most importantly it created a committee of three
Inspecteurs généraux of the Service des édifices diocésains who would maintain
supervisory control over ecclesiastical construction throughout France. In
effect, that three-man committee took over the role held by the architecture and
sculpture section of the Commission des arts et édifices religieux. The first to
hold these prestigious and well-paid posts of Inspecteur général were Viollet-leDuc, Léon Vaudoyer and Léonce Reynaud, each designated a particular part
of the French territory. Vaudoyer and Reynaud owed their luck to Hippolyte
Fortoul, who was Ministre de l’Instruction publique et des Cultes between 1850
and 1856. Viollet-le-Duc, for his part, had been omnipresent in the Service des
édifices diocésains since 1848. He was also very close to the new emperor,
Napoléon III, due to his relationship with Mérimée. Though the responsibility
for the various French dioceses was allocated equally among the three men,
Vaudoyer was given the privilege of sites where important new work was
required, notably Marseilles, while Viollet-le-Duc was put in charge of the 26
dioceses that comprised the most remarkable cathedrals of France. That split
reflected the authority that Viollet-le-Duc had acquired in restoration work,
but also the fact that Fortoul did not trust him with new work. There was an
ideological rift among the Inspecteurs généraux: the clan of Fortoul, Vaudoyer,
and Reynaud encouraged a sophisticated eclecticism while Viollet-le-Duc
maintained his faith in a unified (Gothic) architectural language. This being
said, personal relationships among the three Inspecteurs généraux remained,
by all accounts, exceptionally cordial and friendly.
It is beyond the scope of this book to describe in detail the various
reports, recommendations, and instructions that Viollet-le-Duc drafted in
the years 1848–1849, a work already courageously carried out by Leniaud.
One document, however, stands out from the rest, the pamphlet Édifices
diocésains: Instruction pour la conservation, l’entretien et la restauration
de ces édifices et particulièrement des cathédrales, written by Mérimée and
Viollet-le-Duc and signed by the Ministre de l’Instruction publique et des Cultes,
toward empire 199
Alfred de Falloux, on February 26, 1849. According to Leniaud, the 29-page
text remained the sole reference document on official restoration procedures
for the rest of the century.24 This detailed instruction booklet for the restoration
of medieval ecclesiastical buildings is very technical, which suggests that
it was composed by Viollet-le-Duc, who summarized in it his decade-long
restoration experience.
The circular begins with an emphatic warning:
Architects working in the Service des édifices diocésains, and particularly cathedrals,
should never lose sight of the fact that the goal of their efforts is the conservation of
these buildings, and that the means to fulfill that goal is to see to their better upkeep.
However skillful the restoration of a building, it is always a regrettable necessity.25
One is tempted to assign such reserve to the moderating hand of Mérimée,
since Viollet-le-Duc was not known to shy away from restoration. But the
aim here was to set a general policy, valid for a rather vast body of diocesan
architects who were not always well trained in medieval archaeology. The
introductory warning was not meant for experts such as Viollet-le-Duc
and his close associates. In fact, reading through the Instruction, it becomes
clear that its aim was to provide an initiation into medieval architectural
procedures. The sequence of its 77 paragraphs is a disclosure of the rational
building methods originally used by medieval master masons. The detailed
instructions, written in the clearest and most economical language, partake
of a very precise nomenclature. Despite their dry and laconic character, they
provide a history of the development of medieval techniques. Viollet-leDuc unveils medieval trade secrets, as it were, and summons the modern
restorer to internalize this ancient knowledge. In discussing ornamental
sculpture, for example, he asks diocesan architects not only to “scrupulously
imitate ancient forms, but also the methods of making sculpture.” The
architect “must determine the truly authentic specimens, examining them
with great care, studying them, identifying himself with ancient forms.”26
This last segment, which I italicize for emphasis, stands out within a set
of government instructions. According to the Dictionnaire of Émile Littré,
that most reliable source of nineteenth-century French usage, “identifier”
in a figurative sense is used to refer to people, as when an actor must
“identify himself” with the characters he is called to embody on stage.27
Viollet-le-Duc and Mérimée used the expression to denote the psychological
orientation toward an artistic object, thus wishing to conjure the presence of
its maker through it. The short passage (and others like it in the Instruction)
captures marvelously well how, for Viollet-le-Duc, the mastery of practical
techniques was a means of penetrating the spirit of medieval architectural
production, putting diocesan architects in a position to act as if they were of
the thirteenth century.
What the 1849 pamphlet makes clear, therefore, is not so much an
ideological shift in Viollet-le-Duc’s attitude toward the past, but his
200 architecture and the historical imagination
new determination to effect a generalized revival of medieval practices,
conducted in a more surreptitious but more pervasive manner. Reaching
out to the body of diocesan architects, architects who carried out
both restoration and new work, he no doubt hoped the medieval spirit
would eventually percolate within the rest of the profession. It should
be emphasized that, Émile Zola’s rather malicious portrait in Pôt-Bouille
(1882) notwithstanding, the body of diocesan architects in the 1850s and
1860s constituted a significant segment of the radical and more active
members of the profession, a fact explained by their recruitment being
almost entirely controlled by the three Inspecteurs généraux. One of the
key reforms of 1848 was the new exclusive status conferred upon that
group of architects, now solely authorized to work on French ecclesiastical
buildings. Before that date, diocesan architects formed a loose group,
unsupervised by the central administration, apart from the review done
by the Conseil des bâtiments civils. From December 1848, however, they
became a distinct “body” of government architects, a special group of civil
servants of the Ministère des Cultes, named by the Inspecteurs.28 I have not
compiled precise statistics on the relative proportion of new work versus
restorations. We must assume that the latter dominated, and yet since
diocesan architects were not restricted to working solely for the Service
des édifices diocésains, their knowledge of medieval practice could, in
principle, transpire into the design of their other commissions. In 1859,
Viollet-le-Duc would claim that, since the 1840s, he had “formed a small
army of artists, students in 1846, accomplished masters today, marching
in unison and directing novitiates who held the same principles.”29 A
few years earlier, Viollet-le-Duc had written with satisfaction that his
faction had succeeded in forming a small group of architects, “in training
good practitioners, raising workers in all parts of France, among whom
are recruited the most skilful and the most educated.”30 His reform of
architecture was at the grass-roots level: a corps of young architects was
dispatched to sites scattered across France, reopening abandoned quarries
and drawing on the neglected skills and intelligence of local masons and
carpenters. They formed an entirely new cadre of inspectors, sculptors,
ornemantistes, and heads of workshops who had in-depth knowledge
of medieval construction processes and decoration.31 These artists and
artisans, claimed Viollet-le-Duc, were liberated, allowing their “natural
leanings” and “instincts” a free reign, reawakening the old French spirit.32
It was a true resurrection.
Mérimée himself became an ardent promoter of such a centralized, elite
group of architects. He was never a Gothic revivalist, but in total spiritual
kinship with Viollet-le-Duc, he saw the rigor required to restore medieval
buildings as a means of reforming French architecture and dodging the
pernicious influence of the École des Beaux-Arts. Here is how he presented
the case in a letter to an unidentified correspondent dated around April 1848,
but which, he claims, repeats earlier reform proposals:
toward empire 201
You know more than anyone what deplorable anarchy now reigns among architects.
We should begin by bringing them together as a body, and that body once formed,
the rest would easily follow. What happened to the work begun in that regard a few
years ago? Wouldn’t there be a way to take it up again and bring it to fruition?33
For Mérimée and Viollet-le-Duc, the only architectural “body” capable of
renewing architecture was the diocesan architects. Through 1848 and 1849,
they would emphasize the beneficial social role of restoration works, a sure
means to insure the importance of those works within a new government
intent on educating the unruly class of workers: “Do you not think, Sir,”
writes Mérimée to the Directeur of the École Beaux-Arts, Charles Blanc, in
May 1848, “that it would be necessary to remind the Ministre de l’Intérieur that
the Commission des monuments historiques … could also provide work for
a great number of workers.”34 The next month, Mérimée submitted a report
directly to the Ministre, arguing that restorations “provide to a great number
of professions work that is interesting by its variety and its difficulty.”35
Durieu, while defending the centralizing reforms, would go along with the
idea: “An architect placed at the centre of a diocesan service of conservation
would soon be consulted by the municipalities needing to carry out repairs or
new constructions, and, thanks to good traditions, artistic sensibility [sentiment de
l’art] would trickle down and take root in localities [my emphasis].”36
These various passages show plainly the central administration’s
authoritarian attitude toward the provinces. Viollet-le-Duc’s identification
with the Middle Ages had become generalized and expanded into policies
for colonizing the entire nation. What needs to be stressed is the strategy of
“internalization” of the Gothic past within the Services des édifices diocésains.
The diocesan policies set by the Second Republic (and reinforced all through
the Second Empire) were indeed a vast, countrywide program of architectural
“education” aimed at “naturalizing” within the population the “sentiment de
l’art.” We may be misled into thinking, as Leniaud sometimes suggests, that
the changes in the Services des édifices diocésains were the product of an
efficient cabal organized solely by Mérimée and Viollet-le-Duc. Their political
character is obviously too broad and ramified to be the doing of these two
men alone. Nonetheless, there is an uncanny correspondence between the
evolution of these reforms and that of Viollet-le-Duc’s relation with the
Middle Ages.
Unity as the Aftermath of Conflict
In the short and turbulent period between 1848 and 1853, between the
Revolution and the advent of the Second Empire, not only was Viollet-le-Duc
drawn closer to circles in power, but his writings also gained a new political
dimension. I have emphasized how his early texts showed little concern
for historical systems: “We leave to others the task of finding the why and
202 architecture and the historical imagination
the how,” he wrote in 1845.37 After witnessing the Revolution of 1848 and
the emergence of Louis-Napoléon, and especially after having gained the
privileged vantage point of the higher circles of governmental agencies,
Viollet-le-Duc was quite naturally led to reflect on political issues. It is highly
significant that his copies of Guizot and Thierry’s key historical works are
mostly editions dating from after 1846.38 He was undoubtedly aware of these
famous histories earlier, but made active use of them only in the 1850s.
There is no better way to gauge the change in perspective than to compare
the title of Viollet-le-Duc’s second extended discussion of Gothic architecture,
published in the Revue générale de l’architecture et des travaux publics in 1852,
with the earlier Annales archéologiques essay. “De la construction des édifices
religieux en France depuis le commencement du christianisme jusqu’au
XVIe siècle” becomes an “Essai sur l’origine et les développements de l’art
de bâtir en France depuis la chute de l’Empire romain jusqu’au XVIe siècle.”39
Several changes are significant. From the “édifices religieux,” he expands into
“l’art de bâtir,” thus distancing himself from the promoters of l’art chrétien.
The secular orientation is established by periodization: in the Annales
archéologiques essay, he starts with the advent of Christianity, whereas in the
Revue générale he goes back to the fall of the Roman Empire. Finally, he goes
from a straightforward account of construction to an essay on the origins
of the art of building, in fact embarking on a more interpretative form of
historical writing.
Reading the “Essai sur l’origine” confirms what the title suggests. Instead
of the “narrativized” description of a structural development he offered in
the past, Viollet-le-Duc shifts to the more slippery terrain of a philosophical
history, grappling with causes and historical laws. In a sense, the difference
between the “Essai sur l’origine” and “De la construction” is what will
distinguish the articles on “Architecture” and “Construction” in the future
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture: a slightly different perspective on the
same topic. But the 1844 and 1852 accounts were not mere rehearsals of the
two leading articles of the dictionary to come. The “Essai sur l’origine” marks
a new stage in Viollet-le-Duc’s thinking. It provides the first articulation of his
secular, liberal interpretation of Gothic architecture. It is also the first occasion
for Viollet-le-Duc to celebrate the arrival of the Second Empire.
The essential message of the “Essai sur l’origine” is that anarchy and even
warfare, though troublesome, are necessary elements of development. The
achievement of a higher level of social unity during the Middle Ages was
a product of long chaotic years, the birth pangs of a new society. The onset
of disorder came with the barbarian invasions: “Without the barbarian
invasions,” writes Viollet-le-Duc, “never would Christianity have been able
to change the course of civilization.”40 Not only did the massive and recurring
invasions finally manage to destroy a seemingly unshakable empire, but
the feudal system that came out of it, in establishing warfare as “the normal
state of all of society,” fostered the emergence of “courage and the sense of
individual responsibility.” Such a war-based social organization, according to
toward empire 203
Viollet-le-Duc, was the “most active cause in the intellectual development of
the Middle Ages.”41
Viollet-le-Duc is not writing an apologia for warfare, but rather showing
how a martial spirit can have productive offshoots, leading the way toward “a
permanent state of revolt against matter, the predominance of science, and the
victory of spiritualism.”42 These offshoots are in fact the product of a reaction
against warring chaos:
However savage or primitive a social system, from the moment that a force drives
it, there immediately arises an opposite force to counterbalance it. Feudalism, in
the abstract, is an intolerable form of government; but feudalism establishes the
antagonism, the need and the habit of struggling each day: because populations
raised in that environment must have been singularly apt to overcome all difficulties,
to surmount them, to constitute themselves into a body.43
Viollet-le-Duc’s celebration of violence as a preparation for unification was
quite topical at the time. Those lines were written only a few weeks after the
Coup d’État of December 2, 1851, and immediately following the elections that
sanctioned Louis-Napoléon’s leadership with a crushing majority, making
him a “plebiscited Cesar,” to use Eric Hobsbawm’s apt expression.44 It is
more than likely that Viollet-le-Duc had been privy to the coup d’état even
before it took place, and that he had been preparing his “Essai sur l’origine”
to accompany it. The official rhetoric explaining the event of December 2 was
precisely that it had been a necessary display of strength to prevent anarchy:
the coup was to restore representative government, as the plebiscite that
immediately followed would show. It was tied to fundamental principles
of Bonapartism: the return to order to overcome anarchy, the authoritarian
state as a “popular” form of government, the display of force as prelude to
unification. The same emancipatory role associated with force and violence
was inscribed in Viollet-le-Duc’s history of the Middle Ages: the significant
social body to emerge out of warring feudalism was indeed the famous protodemocratic commune celebrated by a whole generation of liberal historians:
“Feudalism’s most immediate result was to provoke these great associations
called communes, which establish themselves in France at the same time as
architecture develops.”45 Unity is born out of conflict.
This principle of action–reaction inspired by Mérimée and fundamental to
all of Viollet-le-Duc’s post-1848 work, led him to put great emphasis on the
transition from Romanesque to Gothic. This is a noteworthy shift from his
earlier history published in Annales archéologiques, where the Romanesque was
barely acknowledged as a distinct phase in the evolution of the architecture
of the Middle Ages. He opens his discussion of this two-phase evolution with
the fortified castle, the “type cell” of feudalism that Guizot had described so
beautifully in the third volume of his Histoire de la civilisation en France, which
Viollet-le-Duc quotes at length. The feudal castle was the first architectural
manifestation of the emerging spirit of individuality and defiance, born of
Christianity. Created during the golden age of feudalism, it was rooted in
204 architecture and the historical imagination
the land and the region, just like the monastery and the Romanesque church.
The period, according to Viollet-le-Duc, witnessed extraordinary artistic
development, but remained disunified, each region being more or less closed
upon itself. To illustrate his point effectively, Viollet-le-Duc produced three
maps of France, each a beautifully engraved plate accompanying his article in
the Revue générale: the first outlines the stylistic divisions of French architecture
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Fig. 6.1); the second shows the country’s
(permanent) geological divisions (Fig. 6.2); finally, the third, shows the
feudal divisions in France at the end of the tenth century. Comparing plate
6.1 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Division of
France, by styles,
during the eleventh
and twelfth
centuries. Steel
engraving by F.
Penel. Pl. 14 from
Revue générale de
l’architecture et des
travaux publics,
vol. 12, 1852.
Private collection
toward empire 205
one alternatively with plates two and three, “we may observe,” concludes
Viollet-le-Duc, “that the division by style is closer to the geological than to
the political division of the land.”46 Medieval architecture in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries is autonomous from political will; it is regional and lacks a
unifying foyer. By contrast, in its second and key stage of development, it is
associated with the emancipation brought by the communes and the rise of a
centralized monarchy. Keeping to his martial theme, though, Viollet-le-Duc
does not insist on the social structure of the newly affranchised communes, but
on the role of the Normans, that Northern “race possessed by anxiety and the
6.2 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Geological division
of France. Steel
engraving by F.
Penel. Pl. 15 from
Revue générale de
l’architecture et des
travaux publics,
vol. 12, 1852.
Private collection
206 architecture and the historical imagination
desire for constant improvement,”47 “which gathered considerable resources
both for warfare and for building.”48 So instead of buttressing his argument
with the example of Vézelay, as he had done in the Annales archeologiques
essay, he turns to Normandy, dealing especially with the abbey churches
of Sainte-Trinité, the Abbaye-aux-Dames, and Saint-Étienne, the Abbayeaux-Hommes in Caen. This being said, he charts a structural evolution that
remains essentially the same as that related earlier in Annales archéologiques:
Gothic construction is a unified ensemble held together by the principle of
dynamic equilibrium.
The shift from Romanesque to Gothic emphasized in the “Essai sur
l’origine” served as a covert attack on the clan of Fortoul, Vaudoyer, and
Reynaud, who had disparaged the Gothic because of its excess all through the
1840s. Viollet-le-Duc’s aim is obvious from the essay’s introductory words:
We are, if we are to believe the observers of our epoch, in a time of transition; yes,
but from the fall of the Roman Empire up to our time there has been continuous
transition. … Architecture, which is the writing of the people, has followed step by
step that continuous transition.
Both the notion of “transition” and the expression “architecture as the writing
of the people” had been leitmotifs of the Fortoul clan. It inspired Vaudoyer in
the design of his highly erudite Marseilles Cathedral, in which, as Bergdoll
has shown, Vaudoyer juxtaposed a complex assemblage of Roman, Byzantine,
Romanesque, and early Renaissance precedents. By redefining the notion of
transition, Viollet-le-Duc intended to turn away from that kind of hybrid
composition. Buildings were shaped out of a process of fusion rather than
addition. Much later, in the article on “Style” in the eighth volume of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, he described the Romanesque in a way
that provided a succinct and effective criticism of Vaudoyer’s eclecticism:
Romanesque architects purified their taste, they sought improvements,
delicacy, they refined the form, but they could not attain style, which is the
stamp of an idea bolted to a generating principle, in order to achieve a clearly
identified goal.49
So architecture is the “writing of the people,” not because the people
participate in a process of progressive refinements, but because it is forcefully,
if not violently, cast by a people’s vital energy. In the “Essai sur l’origine,”
Viollet-le-Duc draws the same distinction between the Romanesque—
classical knowledge finding refuge in the monasteries within a divisive feudal
society—and the Gothic—inventive, flexible, the product of a political and
social structure that is constantly changing yet unified around the monarchy
and the urban communes. Viollet-le-Duc was thus handling a double layer
of meaning, “political” and “architectural,” one feeding positively on the
other. The eclecticism of the Fortoul clan, associated with the Romanesque,
is germane to the juste milieu and hybrid political system of the court of
Louis-Philippe, while Viollet-le-Duc’s Gothic campaign is identified with the
authoritarian yet populist and unifying political ideas of Louis-Napoléon.
toward empire 207
The idea of unification is the clearest link between the “Essai sur
l’origine” and contemporary politics. It is articulated around the theme of
the barbarian invasions, a historical metaphor in widespread use at the time
to describe the nineteenth-century revolutionary mob.50 In his introduction
to Le peuple of 1846, Jules Michelet had underscored the popularity of the
image, turning, for his purpose, the normally derogative expression into an
affirmation of a people’s vitality: “Often today one compares the ascension
of the people, their progress, to the invasion of the Barbarians. The term
pleases me, I adopt it … Barbarians! Yes, that is to say full of a new, living
and rejuvenating sap.”51 But according to François Furet, the metaphor
was especially in use after the events of June 1848, the brutal uprising
being imagined as the “return of the barbarians against civilization.”52
Charles-Forbes Comte de Montalembert, for instance, used the expression
repeatedly in June 1848: “So here is this invasion of barbarians that we were
promised! We won’t escape any more from it than the Roman Empire did.”53
Viollet-le-Duc himself used the expression in a letter to his father of June
1848, describing the June civil war as “the invasion of barbarians coming
from inside, a struggle that will end only when civilization has repulsed the
very last of these monsters.”54 It may seem ironic that, following a reliable
study, the insurgents of June largely came from the world of traditional
manual workers and masons that Viollet-le-Duc frequently eulogized in his
writings.55
References to the barbarian invasions are obviously inevitable in an essay
that deals with the fall of the Roman Empire. But Viollet-le-Duc clearly gives
it a contemporary resonance. To start with, he pictures the invasions as a basic
agent of change, giving it the status of a historical principle akin to that of the
revolutions in the nineteenth century. But even more striking in the context
of 1852 is his insistence that, in order for that mass of barbarians to become
stable and productive, a figure must emerge to direct it. In other words, for
the mass to form a true body, it must find a chief to incarnate it.
This thesis runs surreptitiously all through the essay. In the first chapter,
Viollet-le-Duc notes how “the invasion of barbarians forced the leaders of the
new religion to take the shepherd’s staff to instruct and direct the troops of
new men [troupes d’hommes neufs].” And he adds significantly that “it was not
with ancient letters and philosophy that one could act upon these savages,”56
perhaps thinking of his own battle against the hegemony of the Académie
des Beaux-Arts. In the second section of the same chapter, he introduces the
figure of Charlemagne, whom he proposes as the first and model leader for
the Middle Ages. “During the whole period of his reign, Charlemagne had
displayed superhuman efforts to establish governmental unity; … he had
attempted to restore the Western Empire. Conquests, charts, administrative
rules—he had done everything to save a civilization that was foundering.”57
But Charlemagne had been unable to establish a long-lasting unity because
his basis of representation was fraught. In that critical evaluation, Viollet-leDuc moves closer to the context of contemporary France:
208 architecture and the historical imagination
We do not wish to diminish the importance of this great figure, nor to dispute
the effectiveness of his efforts; it seems to us, however, that a man, whether he be
Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, or Napoléon the Great, reaches that degree of
influence only if he is the expression, the summary, of the ideas of his century.
The man of genius is precisely he who understands best the needs, the desires, the
tendencies of his time, who anticipates and develops them, and gives a direction to
these desires and tendencies which, without him, would have stayed in embryo. So it
is only following periods of confusion, when entire populations are in a state of gestation, that
these great figures appear whose role is to direct toward a single point the ideas of everyone
[my emphasis].58
The association of that great figure emerging in the wake of a period of
confusion with the Prince-Président Louis-Napoléon, soon to be crowned
Emperor Napoléon III, is unmistakable. The ascension of Louis-Napoléon
was entirely tied to a rhetoric of national unification. He presented himself as
the true representative of the people after a long period of unstable—because
ill founded—regimes. He was that man of genius who embodied the desires
and tendencies of his time as described by Viollet-le-Duc.
Without digressing too much into a history of the Second Empire, it
must be stressed that it was during the reign of Napoléon III that the basis
for a nationalist policy was laid. It is often forgotten that Louis-Napoléon
Bonaparte was first perceived by public opinion as the incarnation of
patriotism.59 The extraordinary chain of events that brought him to the
emperor’s throne at mid-century—the presidential election of 1848, the
Coup d’État of 1851, and the re-establishment of the empire in 1852—are
inexplicable without the patriotic aura surrounding his name. Nephew
of Napoléon the Great, the only heir to the Bonaparte dynasty, LouisNapoléon used the nationalistic sentiments associated with the great
historical memories of the heroic armies of the First Empire marching
through Europe. For both the Coup d’État and the proclamation of the
empire, he chose December 2, date of Napoléon I’s crowning as emperor
in 1804, but also, and more significantly, of the glorious Battle of Austerlitz
in 1805. The Second Empire may not have been a military dictatorship,
but there can be no doubt about the army’s central importance as an
institution. The emperor always wore the military uniform, posing as
the supreme warlord, symbol of national unity. In public processions,
generals symbolically walked ahead of bishops, prefects, and procureurs
généraux.60 All through the regime, military pomp and parades reached
unprecedented heights.61 Beyond the ceremonial, Napoléon III would
also lead a series of military adventures around the world—in Crimea
and Italy, but also in Mexico, Algeria, Syria, Vietnam, and China. Mockversions of these real battles were regularly staged in Paris during festive
ceremonies, a pantomime of war that took on almost ritualistic functions:
purged of the real violence that took place elsewhere, reduced to a
spectacle, war could be transformed into a palpable object of desire (Fig.
6.3). Such extraordinary martial mise-en-scènes greatly shaped popular
imagination and made the defeat of 1870 all the more traumatic. So for
toward empire 209
a great majority of French people, the advent of the Second Empire was
nothing less than the restoration of the great empire defeated on the plains
of Waterloo, a restoration whose patriotic meaning is crucial, and led, in
1852, to spectacular festivities, some of the most important gatherings of
crowds of the century, according to historian Alain Corbin.62 It may be
difficult to understand today how Louis-Napoléon could be perceived as
being the “true” representative of anybody, especially following Victor
Hugo and Karl Marx’s devastating critiques. Seen from a different angle,
however, Louis-Napoléon can be described as a phenomenon of pure
representation: above all, the embodiment of the Napoléonic legend, but
in more complex ways, a useful symbol in the current mythology, for every
political group and faction, aside from the radical left. He opened a field of
auto-representation for his subjects, as it were.
Viollet-le-Duc was probably not entirely swayed by the Napoléonic
mystique,63 which mostly took hold of rural and popular classes. But he
was certainly taken by Louis-Napoléon’s promise of a regeneration of the
nation through the unification of its institutions. He strongly believed in the
authoritarian principle of nationality at the base of the Bonapartist political
project. Raised on liberal values, he nonetheless maintained a paternalistic
political ideal. His family had maintained a long-standing attachment to the
French monarchy, his father, as we have seen, describing Louis-Philippe as
nothing less than “la loi vivante.” Viollet-le-Duc would himself maintain ties
with the Orleans family throughout his life.64 But there is no question that
Viollet-le-Duc had lost faith in the idea of a constitutional monarchy well
before the fall of the regime in 1848. The hybrid Louis-Philippe government
represented for him, as for so many, “the reign of mediocrity,” to use his own
expression.65 He longed above all for unity, aspirations that were entirely
clustered around the notion of nationalism, which would become the central
theme in European politics between 1848 and 1870. Viollet-le-Duc may have
6.3 15 August
anniversary.
Military
pantomime on
the Champ de
Mars. The siege of
Silistrie, Crimean
War. Wood
engraving. From
L’Illustration,
tome 24, n. 599,
vol. 17, 1854.
Private collection
210 architecture and the historical imagination
despised the blind, obedient masses: he liked to portray the French people as a
group relying on the verve and creativity of the individual. But he nonetheless
adhered to the organic model of the centralized body, the action of each
member naturally in contact with the coordinating head as if by an electric
current. The regime established by Louis-Napoléon, especially in its first
authoritarian phase, embodied that ideal for him. Bonapartism had proposed
a national fusion, promising to reconcile the deep internal divisions left by
the French Revolution to build one unified body politic that would constitute
an organic cell within a larger Holy Alliance of Europe, a league of nations
maintained in a vital equilibrium.66 Patriotism was the spiritual force that
would ensure the harmonious coexistence of such a European confederation.
In his Idées napoléonniennes of 1836, Louis-Napoléon had explained his system
as “the reunion, around the altar of the homeland, of Frenchmen of all parties,
prompted by motives of honour and glory.” This was the idea of a sacred
union that Viollet-le-Duc himself would evoke in the war trenches in 1870 for
the benefit of his troops, an appeal ironically made after the crushing defeat
of the empire in the Battle of Sedan.67
The Te Deum Ceremony of January 1852
To illustrate the representational status of Louis-Napoléon, and to provide
further evidence of Viollet-le-Duc’s role in giving shape to it through
historical transpositions, let’s consider the decoration prepared by Violletle-Duc, with Lassus, for the Te Deum ceremony at Notre-Dame on January
1, 1852. The ceremony in honour of Prince-Président Louis-Napoléon was
a barely disguised celebration of his Coup d’État and the ritual expression
of the death of the Second Republic. It was prepared masterfully and at
extraordinary speed. Begun on December 24, 1851, it was ready for the first
of January, after six days of non-stop work by a quasi-military organization
of workers. Its decor was relatively modest if compared with the lavish
ceremonies prepared by Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine, as well as JacobIgnaz Hittorff, earlier in the century. But it was remarkably effective. The
main goal, as in all celebrations of this nature, was entirely representational.
In this case it was a matter of mounting a visual spectacle of the nation as a
whole, no less.
In his extended description of the event, with which he opens the 1852
volume of the Revue générale, just a few pages preceding the first installment
of his “Essai sur l’origine,” Viollet-le-Duc emphasizes the difficulties he
encountered in mounting a coherent spectacle of the nation’s various estates,
particularly since they no longer wore representational costumes:
From an egalitarian point of view, it is perhaps quite pleasant to see a whole nation
dress the same way, from the prime minister to a match salesman; but it is quite
vexing when the time comes to place all these people in a certain order. … from the
point of view of effect, of art, if you will, such uniformity of dress is a terrible thing.68
toward empire 211
These lines, written a couple of days after the festivities, lend interesting
insight into the challenge of finding a mode of representation for the new
French state: the undifferentiated crowd had to regain visual legibility.69
Viollet-le-Duc would elaborate a new visual code in which the total sensorial
effect takes precedence over particularities, whether in dress or iconography
(Fig. 6.4). First, he kept the seating arrangement and the main decorative
elements to a very basic order. On the central axis, exactly at the church
crossing, in complete isolation, stood Louis-Napoléon with his crimson seat
and prie-dieu. Immediately in front, at the threshold of the choir, Viollet-le-Duc
raised a relatively modest Gothic altar-canopy where the archbishop was to
officiate. Over the crossing, a colossal canopy of crimson velvet drapery hung
from the vault, one of the dramatic elements of the décor. The various groups
forming the audience were distributed around this central focus, raised on
raked temporary wooden tribunes to maximize the number of places and
to increase visibility. The sole and significant exception was the body of
military officers who stood directly on the cathedral’s floor, like the PrincePrésident, behind him along the main nave. Occupying the full depth of each
arm of the transept rose tribunes, slightly raked, for the major government
bodies. On either side of the main nave, two parallel rows of tribunes held the
representatives of each region of France. Tucked in the bas-côté, in even higher
tribunes (as in a Greek theatre), was the women’s gallery. Towering above, all
the way in the first-floor galleries of Notre-Dame, tribunes were built for the
general public. By and large, there was a reverse order between height and
hierarchy: the lower in the church, thus closest to Louis-Napoléon’s level, the
higher-up on the hierarchical ladder.
In many respects, Viollet-le-Duc’s decorative scheme followed the tradition
set by the Administration des Menus Plaisirs during the Restoration, and
before that, by Percier and Fontaine during the First Empire. The same raked
tribunes distributing the various constituencies, with an elaborate altar (or
throne) at the center, especially built for the occasion. What differentiates
the ceremony of 1852, however, is its spatialized layout. If we compare it,
for instance, to the baptism of the Duc de Bordeaux of May 1821, a ceremony
to which Viollet-le-Duc alludes and which offers the closest precedent to his
own, the differences are quite clear. Whereas in 1821 the audience was entirely
gathered along the main nave, all tribunes compressed along it in order for
the spectators to follow the bi-focal procession from the throne to the altar, the
raked tribunes for the 1852 Te Deum extended the full depth of the side aisles
and arms of the transept, while the large body of military officers occupied
the nave itself. The result was a clearly visible layout of every constituent, as
shown by Léon Gaucherel’s exquisite woodcut published in the Revue générale
to accompany Viollet-le-Duc’s description (Fig. 6.4). Louis-Napoléon is at the
center of a cruciform national body. To further accentuate visual clarity and
assure the prominence of the Prince-Président, Viollet-le-Duc blocked off the
entire area of the choir, the Gothic altar at its entry forming a screen spatially
delimiting the ceremony. Viollet-le-Duc thus transformed the processional
6.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Decoration of the Church of Notre-Dame at the occasion
of the Te Deum ceremony. Engraving by Léon Gaucherel. Pl. 3 from Revue générale
de l’architecture et des travaux publics, vol. 10, 1852. Private collection
toward empire 213
arrangement of previous ceremonies into a spatialized and static tableau,
displaying the organizational diagram of the nation.
Though blocked off to circulation, the choir could be seen. Viollet-le-Duc
exploited that space beautifully by hanging in it hundreds of chandeliers,
transforming it into “a vast foyer de lumière.”70 He hid 500 musicians and singers
in the triforium of the choir, so that light and music would originate from the
same source. The dichotomy set up between the choir and the main nave,
the here and the there, far from robbing the ceremony of its unity, served to
reinforce it: to the west were gathered in cruciform shape the various bodies
of the nation, with Louis-Napoléon as their head facing the altar and the
archbishop; to the east, as a sort of ultimate destination, was the illuminated
sanctuary, a chemin de lumière suggesting a feeling of mystical oneness.71 In
the first volume of his Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l’époque
carolingienne à la Renaissance, Viollet-le-Duc had described the light-filled choir
as symbolic of celestial Jerusalem. The ceremony thus acquired the character
of a prelude, more political than religious, to the future reconstruction of the
nation by Louis-Napoléon. The event ended with a rather unorthodox prayer,
the Domine salvum fac Ludovicum Napoleonum that would generate complaints
from members of the clergy.72 The iconographical theme for the entire
ceremony was the monarch’s emblems and not those of the Second Republic.
The future Napoléon III was already graced with the status of emperor, his
initials “LN” surrounded by a crown of laurel being the principal motif of the
decorative system, particularly in the main nave, where twelve huge crimson
banners emblazoned with gilded stars and the initials LN were hung from
the vault. The great canopy, also inscribed with the imperial letters, floated
directly above the altar, a most effective image of the intertwining of religion
and politics familiar to the ancien régime and the Restoration. However, the
iconographic program was considerably pared down in comparison with the
accumulation of dynastic icons of earlier ceremonies: next to the astonishingly
dense hangings created for Le Sacre of Charles X of May 29, 1825, Viollet-leDuc’s decor for the Te Deum ceremony seems almost bare. The iconography is
in fact reduced to the single dominant element of the initials surrounded by
the laurel crown.
In fact, more complex dynastic iconographical elements had been left for
the exterior. On either side of the front façade’s great rose window, Violletle-Duc had painted figures four meters tall: Charlemagne and Saint Louis on
the left, and Louis XIV and Napoléon the Great on the right (Fig. 6.5). From
Charlemagne to Napoléon via the Bourbon, these icons unified French history
in a single sweep. Traditionally, Clovis represented the first French rulers.
It was now France’s imperial rather than monarchic past which was being
celebrated. The way Viollet-le-Duc lined up the four figures on the façade of
Notre-Dame clearly meant to tie Charlemagne with Napoléon and Saint Louis
with Louis XIV. Not only are the two emperors symmetrically related, but
judging from the engraving published on the cover of L’Illustration, they alone
glanced in the direction of the ceremony below. Saint-Louis and Louis XIV,
214 architecture and the historical imagination
6.5 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Exterior
decoration of
Notre-Dame for
the [Te Deum]
ceremony of
the 1st January
1852. Wood
engraving. From
L’Illustration,
tome 19, n. 462,
vol. 19, 1852.
Private collection
in contrast, look toward the city as if unconcerned about the events unfolding
at their feet. The pairing of Charlemagne and Napoléon would be even more
direct in the festive decorations that Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus prepared for
the marriage of the emperor a year later. The two architects simply juxtaposed
equestrian statues of the two great conquerors erected especially for the
occasion at the top of the cathedral’s porch. For the 1852 Te Deum, the icons
of the two emperors were supplemented below with religious tapestries
representing scenes from the Old and the New Testaments,73 inferring that
Charlemagne had been to the old world what Napoléon was to the new.
The evocation of Charlemagne dovetails with a major argument of the “Essai
sur l’origine.” During the Middle Ages, claimed Viollet-le-Duc, Charlemagne
fulfilled the role of precursor: he planted the seed of the idea of unity and order
amidst the turmoil of the barbarian invasions, but he was unable to create
the stable institutions for that unity to be maintained following his death.
That role was left to the monarchy after the twelfth century, and eventually
to the Revolution and Napoléon. But within nineteenth-century politics, the
same pattern of precursor and consolidator could be transposed onto the two
Napoléons. Napoléon I implanted the key centralized administrative structure
of modern France following the revolutionary turmoil, as Louis-Napoléon
himself proclaimed repeatedly in the years 1851–1852: “Today’s society is
toward empire 215
nothing else than France regenerated by the revolution of 1789 and organized
by the emperor [Napoléon I].”74 But Napoléon the Great’s reorganization
ultimately failed, because like Charlemagne before him, his plan was too big,
and his pace too fast: “he tried to do the work of several centuries in ten years
of Empire” wrote Louis-Napoléon in his Idées napoléoniennes.75 The nephew’s
role was, therefore, that of a consolidator, who finally created the stable,
democratic (but authoritarian) political structure for modern France. So
within Viollet-le-Duc’s historical genealogy, there existed a fairly complex but
consistent pattern between Charlemagne, the French monarchy, Napoléon I
and Louis-Napoléon.
With the Te Deum ceremony, the historical message is transformed
into a unified drama. With its sober decor, the cathedral interior loses the
Troubadour character it displayed in the festive ceremonies of the Restoration.
The iconography was reduced to the initials LN. The spectacle was defined
entirely by concrete qualities of light, color, sound and scale. With music and
chants coming from the illuminated choir at the far end, a true phantasmagoria
was produced. Louis-Napoléon, in the center, basked in light, wearing his
military uniform, and followed by his entire corps militaire, seems ready to
move directly into battle. The foyer de lumière signaled a patriotic destiny,
evoking all at once the image of an archaic past and a glorious future. The
Middle Ages were thus integrated into the life of the nation in a way that
appears immediate and real: any nostalgia was dispelled by the sense of a
new collective destiny. The ceremony marked the beginning of the spiritual
fusion that the restoration of the empire will bring. The fusion of the arts in the
midst of the cathedral forms its annunciation. Lamennais’s Neo-Catholic idea
of a religious social unification produced through the synesthetic experience
of the Gothic cathedral—like Viollet-le-Duc’s own childhood synesthesia—
was deflected toward a political project. The restoration of the empire and the
restoration of the cathedrals of France had become part of the same program
of national unity.
Notes
1
This last installment ends with the note “La suite prochainement.” But it is
undoubtedly a mistake. In the table of contents published at the end of the
volume that year, the word fin appears beside the title. And, the previous year,
Didron had announced that there were only two installments left to Violletle-Duc’s article; see Adolphe-Napoléon Didron “Avenir et passé des Annales,”
Annales archéologiques, hereafter AA, 5 (1846): 380, which makes clear that the
May 1847 installment was intended to be the last. Reading the piece itself
confirms this. Yet it is equally clear that it was not the end as originally planned.
As the title indicates, Viollet-le-Duc’s article on Gothic construction was meant
to cover the period up to the sixteenth century, whereas the last published
chapter discusses vault construction of classic thirteenth-century Gothic. The
most overt sign of a deliberate change of plan is the change in title in the 1847
installments: instead of the original “De la construction des édifices religieux
216 architecture and the historical imagination
en France depuis le commencement du christianisme jusqu’au XVIe siècle” it
appears simply as “De la construction des monuments religieux en France.”
These remarks are important as they may indicate that Viollet-le-Duc, in late
1846, was already thinking of ending his contribution to Annales archéologiques.
2
César Daly, “De la liberté dans l’art—À Monsieur Ludovic Vitet,” Revue générale
de l’architecture et des travaux publics, hereafter RGATP, 7 (1848): col. 431.
3
Adolphe-Napoléon Didron, “Aux abonnés des Annales,” AA 8 (1848): 351–353.
4
Didron, “Aux abonnés des Annales,” 79.
5
Adolphe-Napoléon Didron, “L’archéologie sous la République,” AA 8 (1848):
165–172.
6
In a letter to Viollet-le-Duc’s son dated February 24, 1887, Didron’s nephew,
Edouard-Adolphe, claimed that his uncle had burned all his correspondence in
“un accès de misantropie,” MAP, “Correspondance de personnages divers,” doc.
101. This “fit” was likely the product of Didron having been marginalized in the
general restructuring of the patrimonial institutions after 1848.
7
“Il est difficile entre gens qui sont comme nous séparés par une dizaine
d’années, par des relations différentes, de contracter une de ces amitiés qui ne
forment guère que dans la première jeunesse, mais cependant il y a aussi un
grand plaisir quand ces différences existent à voir cette amitié se former avec
prudence après mille épreuves. Pour peu que nous voyagions encore quelque
temps ensemble, je crois qu’il y aura entre nous une véritable amitié,” Violletle-Duc to his wife Elisabeth, Saintes, September 13, 1844; quoted in Pierre-Marie
Auzas, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1814–1879 (Paris: Caisse nationale des monuments
historiques, 1979), 44–45.
8
Elisabeth Wolstenholme, “Viollet-le-Duc and Mérimée: A Comparative Study
of their Theories on Restoration,” Master’s thesis, University of Manchester,
1966, 196.
9
Auzas, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1814–1879, 49.
10
See Robin Middleton’s account of that trip, which has left very little trace :
“Viollet-le-Duc: son influence en Angleterre,” Actes du colloque international
Viollet-le-Duc Paris 1980, ed. Pierre-Marie Auzas (Paris: Nouvelle Éditions
Latines, 1982), 267–269.
11
In private notes written later, Viollet-le-Duc affirmed that 1848 was the moment
when the clergy revealed its profound inadequacies: “In aspiring to play a role
in the state from 1848, [the clergy] only made apparent its extreme weakness, the
pettiness of its practices, the narrowness of its views, and its love of everything
false or mediocre (En voulant être quelque chose dans l’état depuis 1848 [le
clergé] n’a fait voir que son extrême faiblesse, la petitesse de ses moyens, le peu
d’étendue de ses vues, son amour pour ce qui est faux ou mediocre),” July 16,
1858, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1855–1859,” doc. 219.
12
Viollet-le-Duc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, Paris, June 30, 1848, Lettres inédites
de Viollet-le-Duc recueillies et anotées par son fils (Paris: Librairies-imprimeries
réunies, 1902), hereafter LIV, 10.
13
Jean-Michel Leniaud, Les cathédrales au XIXe siècle (Paris: Economica, 1993), 284.
14
Leniaud, Les cathédrales au XIX siècle, 45–61.
15
See Frank Paul Bowman, Le Christ des barricades, 1789–1848 (Paris: Cerf, 1987), 21ff.
toward empire 217
16
Bowman, Le Christ des barricades, 1789–1848, 21ff.
17
Leniaud did not compile figures for every year of the July Monarchy, but
after 1844, the budget appears to stabilize; see Les cathédrales au XIX siècle,
91–94. A good source for an efficient portrait of the economics of the period
is Éric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1975).
18
Leniaud, Les cathédrales au XIX siècle, 41.
19
Prosper Mérimée, Une note inédite de Prosper Mérimée sur l’ouvrier français
(Blanzac: La Pennellière, 1975). This is an extremely limited published edition of
a letter, whose manuscript is held in the Rare Books and Special Collections of
McGill University Libraries.
20
Mark Traugott, Armies of the Poor. Determinants of Working Class Participation
in the Parisian Insurrection of June 1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1985).
21
Leniaud, Les cathédrales au XIXe siècle, 48ff.
22
Leniaud, Les cathédrales au XIX siècle, 107–109.
23
Leniaud, Les cathédrales au XIX siècle, 64ff.
24
Leniaud, Les cathédrales au XIX siècle, 362.
25
“Les architectes attachés au service des édifices diocésains, et particulièrement
des cathédrales, ne doivent jamais perdre de vue que le but de leurs efforts est
la conservation de ces édifices, et que le moyen d’atteindre ce but est l’attention
apportée à leur entretien. Quelque habile que soit la restauration d’un édifice,
c’est toujours une nécessité fâcheuse; un entretien intelligent doit toujours la
prévenir,” Prosper Mérimée and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, “Édifices diocésains:
Instruction pour la conservation, l’entretien et la restauration de ces édifices et
particulièrement des cathédrales,” reprinted in the appendix to Leniaud, Les
cathédrales au XIXe siècle, 810.
26
“Non seulement il devra imiter scrupuleusement les formes anciennes, mais
aussi le travail de la sculpture. [Il] notera les originaux bien authentiques, les
examinera avec soin, les étudiera, s’identifiera avec les formes anciennes,”
Viollet-le-Duc and Mérimée, “Édifices diocésains: Instruction pour la
conservation, l’entretien et la restauration de ces édifices et particulièrement des
cathédrales,” 823.
27
Émile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. (Paris: Librairie Hachette et
Cie, 1873–1874) vol. 3, 5.
28
See again the detailed account by Leniaud, Les cathédrales au XIXe siècle, 157ff.
29
“Il se forma une petite armée d’artistes, élèves en 1846, maîtres consommés
aujourd’hui, marchant unis et dirigeant les nouveaux venus d’après les mêmes
principes,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Les mandarins à Paris,” Gazette des beaux-Arts 1
(1859): 92.
30
“À former un noyau soumis à certains principes d’art, … à faire de bons
praticiens, à élever des ouvriers sur toute la surface de la France, parmi lesquels
on recrute les plus habiles et les plus instruits,” Viollet-le-Duc, “À Adolphe
Lance. Paris, 20 décembre 1855,” Encyclopédie d’architecture, 6 (1856): col. 7.
31
See Pierre Petroz, L’art et la critique en France depuis 1822 (Paris: Germer Baillière,
1875), 299–300.
218 architecture and the historical imagination
32
Viollet-le-Duc, “À Adolphe Lance,” col. 6.
33
“Vous savez mieux que personne quelle déplorable anarchie existe aujourd’hui
parmi les architectes. Il faudrait commencer par en former un corps, et ce corps
une fois constitué le reste se ferait facilement. Où en sont les travaux commencés
à ce sujet il y a quelques années? N’y aurait-il pas moyen de les reprendre et
de les mener à bien?” Prosper Mérimée, Correspondance générale, ed. Maurice
Parturier. 17 vols. (Paris: Le divan et Privat, 1941–1964), vol. 5, 298.
34
“Ne pensez-vous pas Monsieur, que ce serait le cas de rappeler à M. le ministre
de l’Intérieur que les Monuments historiques … pourraient aussi fournir du
travail à un grand nombre d’ouvriers,” Prosper Mérimée to Charles Blanc,
Correspondance générale, vol. 5, 316.
35
“Les réparations autant qu[e les restaurations] offrent à un grand nombre de
professions des travaux intéressants par leur variété et leur difficulté même,”
Prosper Mérimée, report to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, June 1848; quoted in
Wolstenholme, “Viollet-le-Duc and Mérimée: A Comparative Study of their
theories on Restoration,” 124.
36
“Un architecte placé au centre d’une conservation diocésaine ne tarderait pas
à être naturellement consulté par les communes qui auraient à entreprendre
soit des réparations, soit des constructions neuves et avec les bonnes traditions,
le sentiment de l’art descendrait de proche en proche et se naturaliserait dans
les localités,” Jean-Louis Eugéne Durieu; quoted without a precise reference in
Leniaud, Les cathédrales au XIXe siècle, 47.
37
“Nous laisserons à d’autres le soin de trouver pourquoi et comment,” Viollet-leDuc, “De la construction,” AA 2 (1845): 71.
38
Like, for example, François Guizot’s crucial Histoire de la civilisation en France
(Paris: Didier, 1846), and Augustin Thierry’s Récits des temps mérovingiens
(Paris: Furne, 1846). His copies of Thierry’s Lettres sur l’histoire de France (Paris:
J. Tessier, 1842) and Guizot’s Essais sur l’histoire de France (Paris: Charpentier,
1844) were slightly earlier, but may of course have been purchased after 1848.
39
Viollet-le-Duc, “Essai sur l’origine et les développements de l’art de bâtir en
France depuis la chute de l’Empire romain jusqu’au XVIe siècle,” RGATP 10
(1852): cols. 35–42, 74–81, 134–146, 242–253, 343–352, and 11 (1853): 8–16.
40
Viollet-le-Duc, “Essai sur l’origine et les développements de l’art de bâtir en
France depuis la chute de l’Empire romain jusqu’au XVIe siècle,” RGATP 10
(1852): col. 38.
41
“La cause la plus active du développement intellectuel au moyen âge,” Violletle-Duc, “Essai sur l’origine et les développements de l’art de bâtir en France,”
Viollet-le-Duc, RGATP 10 (1852): cols. 141–142.
42
“L’état permanent de révolte contre la matière, la prépondérance de la science,
et la victoire du spiritualisme,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Essai sur l’origine et les
développements de l’art de bâtir en France,” RGATP 10 (1852): col. 246.
43
“Si sauvage ou si primitif que soit un état social, du moment qu’une force le
constitue, il s’élève immédiatement une force opposée qui lui fait contre-poids.
La féodalité, abstraitement parlant, est un gouvernement intolérable; mais la
féodalité établit l’antagonisme, le besoin et l’habitude de lutter chaque jour:
car des populations élevées dans ce milieu devaient être singulièrement aptes
à vaincre toutes les difficultés, à les surmonter, à se constituer en corps, à
développer tous les moyens dont elles pouvaient disposer, en ne comptant que
toward empire 219
sur elles-mêmes,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Essai sur l’origine et les développements de
l’art de bâtir en France,” RGATP 10 (1852): col. 346.
44
Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848–1875, 146.
45
“La féodalité eut pour résultat presque immédiat de provoquer ces grandes
associations des communes, qui s’établissent en France en même temps
que l’architecture se développe,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Essai sur l’origine et les
développements de l’art de bâtir en France,” RGATP 10 (1852): col. 346.
46
“On observera que la division par styles se rapproche plus de la division
politique du sol,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Essai sur l’origine et les développements de
l’art de bâtir en France,” RGATP 10 (1852): col. 351.
47
“Ces races étaient possédées de cette inquiétude, de ce besoin du mieux,”
Viollet-le-Duc, “Essai sur l’origine et les développements de l’art de bâtir en
France,” RGATP 11 (1853): col. 12.
48
“Les Normands ne tarderont guère à réunir des ressources considérables qui
furent employées à la guerre et à bâtir,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Essai sur l’origine et les
développements de l’art de bâtir en France,” RGATP 10 (1852): col. 349.
49
Viollet -le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle,
10 vols. (Paris: B. Bance and A. Morel, 1854–1868), 8, 486.
50
See Pierre Michel, Les Barbares, 1789–1848: Un mythe romantique (Lyon: Presses
universitaires de Lyon, 1981).
51
“Souvent aujourd’hui l’on compare l’ascension du peuple, son progrès, à
l’invasion des Barbares. Le mot me plaît, je l’accepte. … Barbares! Oui, c’est-à-dire
pleins d’une sève nouvelle, vivante et rajeunissante,” Jules Michelet, Le peuple
(1846) (Paris: Champs Flammarion, 1974), 72.
52
François Furet, Revolutionary France 1770–1880 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 405.
53
Charles-Forbes Comte de Montalembert to Xavier de Mérode, June 28,
1848; quoted in Charles de Montalembert, Journal intime inédit, 8 vols. (Paris:
Champion, 2004), vol. 4 (1844–1848), 550.
54
“Ce sont des invasions de barbares venant du dedans, la lutte ne finira que
quand la civilisation aura repoussé jusqu’au dernier de ces monstres,” Viollet-leDuc to his father Emmanuel-Louis, June 30, 1848, LIV, 11–12.
55
Traugott, Armies of the Poor, passim.
56
“L’invasion des barbares a forcé les chefs de la nouvelle religion à prendre le
bâton de pasteur pour instruire et diriger ces troupes d’hommes neufs, et ce
n’était pas avec les lettres et la philosophie antiques que l’on pouvait agir sur ces
sauvages,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Essai sur l’origine et les développements de l’art de
bâtir en France,” RGATP 10 (1852): col. 38.
57
“Charlemagne, pendant toute la durée de son règne, avait fait des efforts
surhumains pour établir l’unité gouvernementale; … il avait tenté de restaurer
cet empire d’Occident. Conquêtes, chartres, règlements administratifs, il avait
tout mis en œuvre pour sauver une civilisation qui sombrait,” Viollet-le-Duc,
“Essai sur l’origine et les développements de l’art de bâtir en France,” RGATP 10
(1852): col. 78.
58
“Nous ne voulons pas diminuer l’importance de ce grand personnage, ni
contester l’efficacité de ses efforts; toutefois il nous paraît qu’un homme, fût-il
Alexandre, César, Charlemagne ou Napoléon, n’arrive à ce degré d’influence
220 architecture and the historical imagination
que parce qu’il est l’expression, le résumé des idées de son siècle. L’homme de
génie est précisément celui qui comprend le mieux les besoins, les désirs, les
tendances de son temps, qui les devance et les développe, et donne une direction
à ces désirs et à ces tendances qui sans lui fussent restées [sic] à l’état de germe.
Aussi n’est-ce qu’à la suite des époques de confusion, alors que des populations
entières sont dans l’enfantement, qu’apparaissent ces grandes figures dont le rôle
consiste à diriger vers un seul point les idées de tous,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Essai sur
l’origine et les développements de l’art de bâtir en France,” RGATP 10 (1852):
col. 78.
59
See Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Jean-Jacques Becker, La France, la nation, la
guerre: 1850–1920 (Paris: Sedes, 1995), 18.
60
Roger Price, The French Second Empire. An Anatomy of Political Power (Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 37 and 407.
61
See Raoul Girardet, La société militaire dans la France contemporaine, 1815–1939
(Paris: Plon, 1953), 24–26; see also Comte Maurice Fleury and Louis Sonolet,
La société du Second Empire d’après les mémoires contemporains et des documents
nouveaux (Paris: Michel, 1911).
62
Alain Corbin, “Traces et silences des sens: propositions pour une histoire
impossible,” Revue européenne d’histoire 2 (1995): 125; quoted in Audoin-Rouzeau
and Becker, La France, la nation, la guerre: 1850–1920, 18.
63
All through his writings on war, Viollet-le-Duc decried the French military’s
love of great pomp and ceremony. He also considered useless the Second
Empire’s simulations of battles; see Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de
l’époque carolingienne à la renaissance, hereafter DRM, 8 vols. (Paris: B. Bance and
A. Morel, 1858–1875), vol. 5, 8.
64
In 1851, he would be named administrator of the estate of the Maison d’Orleans,
and as late as 1874 he accepted the commission to renovate the Château d’Eu
for Louis-Philippe Albert d’Orléans, at a time in his career when he more or less
turned down all other jobs.
65
From note no. 27, dated 1857, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1855–1859,”
doc. 150.
66
For a succinct and resonant description of the tradition napoléonienne, one with
which we know Viollet-le-Duc was in total accord, see the text of a speech by
Prince-President Napoléon at Ajaccio, the unveiling ceremony for the monument
designed by Viollet-le-Duc in memory of Napoléon the Great and his brothers,
transcribed integrally in the newspaper Journal des débats politiques et littéraires of
May 19 and 20, 1865, unpaged.
67
Jean-Baptiste Massillon Rouvet, Viollet-le-Duc and Alphand au siège de Paris (Paris:
Librairies-imprimeries réunies, 1892), 140. More on this below.
68
“Sous le point de vue égalitaire, il est peut-être fort beau de voir tout un peuple,
depuis le premier ministre jusqu’au marchand d’allumettes, habillé de même;
mais cela est fort gênant lorsqu’il s’agit de placer tout ce monde suivant un
certain ordre. … Sous le point de vue cérémonial, cet oubli des traditions est
une faute, à notre avis; mais sous le point de vue de l’effet, ou de l’art si l’on
veut, cette uniformité d’habits est une chose terrible et qui étouffe toutes les
tentatives que l’on peut faire pour donner un aspect imposant à une cérémonie,”
Viollet-le-Duc, “Cérémonies publiques accomplies dans l’église Notre-Dame de
Paris. Te Deum chanté le 1er janvier 1852,” RGATP 10 (1852): cols. 9–10. Violletle-Duc was not the first to lament the flatness of modern existence in contrast to
toward empire 221
the distinguishing marks of traditional society. In the preface to his novel Une
fille d’Ève (1839), Balzac described how “societies have lost their picturesque
character: there are no longer any costumes nor any banners. … In the past,
the caste system gave each person a physiognomy that took precedence over
the individual; today, the individual gets his physiognomy from himself,” La
Comédie humaine, 12 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, La Pléiade, 1976), vol. 2, 263 [my
translation]. See also Peter Brooks, “The Text of the City,” Oppositions 8 (Spring
1977): 7.
69
The method devised by Viollet-le-Duc to channel the various constituent groups
to their allocated places within the church offers an interesting precedent for
what could be described as modern crowd management: a system of abstract
signs supersedes physiognomy and costume in assigning positions. Violletle-Duc gave a detailed account of it in the Revue générale de l’architecture et des
travaux publics: “Here is the means that we adopted to categorize these fifteen to
eighteen hundred personages wearing totally uniform dress. At each door of the
church [of Notre-Dame] were posted cards in the color that gave access at that
door: thus all [bearers of] blue cards entered by the door on rue du Cloître; red
cards, by the door on the south side, etc. But each constituent body was [also]
distinguished by the form or the dimension of its invitation card, and over each
tribune hung a legend indicating its destination. Simply by looking at the color
of the card, the police could thus direct whoever arrived to such and such an
entrance; and, at each entrance, the usher, by examining the form of the card,
could indicate the person’s place. So the arrival of the public was handled easily,
silently, and without confusion. I insist on these details that are today of great
importance in public ceremonies (Voici le moyen que nous avions adopté pour
classer ces quinze ou dix-huit cents personnages d’un extérieur parfaitement
uniforme. À chaque porte de l’église étaient affichées les cartes d’une même
couleur qui donnaient entrée par ces portes: ainsi toutes les cartes bleues
entraient par la porte de la rue du Cloître; les cartes rouges, par la porte du côté
sud, etc. Seulement, chaque corps était distingué par la forme ou la dimension
de la carte d’invitation, et chaque tribune était surmontée d’une légende
indiquant sa destination. La police pouvait ainsi, rien qu’en voyant la couleur
de la carte, dire aux arrivants: allez à telle ou telle entrée; et à chaque entrée,
les huissiers, à l’examen de la forme de la carte, indiquaient les places. Aussi
l’introduction du public s’est-elle faite facilement, sans bruit, sans confusion.
J’insiste sur ces détails qui sont d’une grande importance aujourd’hui dans les
cérémonies publiques),” Viollet-le-Duc, “Cérémonies publiques accomplies dans
l’Église Notre-Dame de Paris,” col. 10. The simple system devised by Violletle-Duc was effective largely because no words of explanation were needed:
a glance at the invitation card—the police decoding the color, the usher the
form—and the crowd gathering around the church could be segregated and
directed to the allotted spaces. The undifferentiated mass could thus be shaped
into a meaningful body, as it were.
70
“Le choeur particulièrement formait un vaste foyer de lumière sur lequel se
détachaient le baldaquin de l’autel et le grand dais,” Viollet-le-Duc, “Cérémonies
publiques accomplies dans l’Église Notre-Dame de Paris,” col. 12.
71
Viollet-le-Duc, DRM, vol. 1, 151.
72
See Jean Maurain, La politique ecclésiastique du Second Empire de 1852 à 1869 (Paris:
Alcan, 1930), 12–13.
73
See Viollet-le-Duc, “Cérémonies publiques accomplies dans l’Église Notre-Dame
de Paris,” col. 11.
222 architecture and the historical imagination
74
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, “Discours du 14 janvier 1852,” Discours et messages
de Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte depuis son retour en France jusqu’au 2 décembre 1852
(Paris: Plon, 1853), 204.
75
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Des idées napoléoniennes (London: Henri Colburn,
1839), 177.
7
The Gothic Put to Use
The Second Empire and the Launching of the Dictionnaire raisonné
The “Essai sur l’origine et les développements de l’art de bâtir en France
depuis la chute de l’Empire romain jusqu’au XVIe siècle” was never
completed. Repeating the pattern set in 1847 with “De la construction des
édifices religieux,” a last installment appeared in the Revue générale de
l’architecture et des travaux publics in January 1853 announcing another that
never materialized. And, as with Annales archéologiques, the interruption
coincided with a new political context. Napoléon III’s declaration of the
Second Empire came at the very end of 1852, when Viollet-le-Duc delivered
the last installment to César Daly. The advent of the new imperial regime
was hardly a surprise; all government policies set by the Prince-Président
after the coup d’état pointed in that direction. And with the Te Deum
ceremony, Viollet-le-Duc had himself participated in its annunciation.
Yet the reach of the actual event should not be underestimated: the new
political regime sealed Viollet-le-Duc’s professional future. Thanks to his
close friendship with Prosper Mérimée, who was a long-time friend of the
future empress Eugénie de Montijo, Viollet-le-Duc would have privileged
access to the court, eventually becoming an intimate of the imperial couple.
Such informal relations were important during the Second Empire, when
in order to enjoy influence, one needed intimate access to the monarch.1
Eugénie would come to address him as “Mon bon Viollet.” According to
the testimony of Madame Carette, one of Eugénie’s ladies-in-waiting, the
empress relied on Viollet-le-Duc for every sort of delicate negotiations.
He managed, she writes, to maintain “the adaptability, the skillfulness,
and the charm of a perfect courtier.”2 He was extremely resourceful in
any situation. In the chateau at Compiègne, summer seat of the court
of Napoléon III, Viollet-le-Duc, like a modern Inigo Jones, directed and
created sets for the plays, charades, and satires that were produced by the
court for its own entertainment. Madame Carette, who was not always so
kind to Viollet-le-Duc because of his disavowing the empire after 1870,
paints nonetheless a wonderful picture of the latter’s untiring zeal:
224 architecture and the historical imagination
For the organization of the various recreational activities at Compiègne, promenades,
plays, tableaux vivants, Viollet-le-Duc showed an incomparable resourcefulness.
Whenever something was missing, he would in no time paint a decor with a few
brush strokes. Ingenious, skillful in everything, he could wonderfully repair an
accident, compose a verse, direct the production, replace at the last minute a missing
actor and fulfill with untiring patience the unrewarding and difficult role of prompter
in the midst of a company of amateurs generally without previous acting experience.
During rehearsals, one could see Viollet-le-Duc’s delicate head emerging from the
prompter’s trap, with its crown of gray hair, his face always cheerful. With utmost
courtesy, he would correct the chic actresses, inexperienced for the most part. He
had a marvelous gift for imitation, and, from the silvery voice of the ingénue to the
tragic tone of the traitor, he could wonderfully imitate any posture, any intonation,
graciously outlining a duchess’s bow, or the stabbing of a swordsman. Full of spirit
and bonhomie, capable of putting everyone in agreement, he succeeded in maintaining
harmony among easily triggered susceptibilities.3
Viollet-le-Duc advised Napoléon III in several fields, especially archaeology
and military architecture, two favorite pastimes of the emperor. With the
restoration of the Pierrefonds fortress, they became especially close, Viollet-leDuc referring to the emperor as his “patron,” or even sometimes as “papa,” if a
late testimony of Princess Mathilde is to be believed.4 His interest in everything
related to the military led him to develop friendships with many high-ranking
officers at court, including General Comte Frédéric-Antoine-Marc d’Andlau,
General Comte Claude-Pierre Pajol, Marshal Marie-Edmé-Patrice de MacMahon, General Jules-Henri Soumain, and General Louis-Jules Trochu—
relations established well before his experience in the Franco–Prussian War.
He was himself a member of the cercle militaire. According to Massillon
Rouvet, Viollet-le-Duc gave a number of lectures on fortifications to military
officers in the early years of the Second Empire.5
In addition to the emperor’s court, Viollet-le-Duc would also frequent
the salon of Princess Mathilde, where the artistic and literary intelligentsia
of the era met. Visiting regularly the hôtel on rue de Courcelles, Viollet-leDuc eventually won the deeply-felt affection of the princess, who called him
“sa petite violette.” In Mathilde’s salon, he met his friend Prosper Mérimée,
the sculptor Comte Alfred-Émilien-O’Hara de Nieuwerkerke who became
Directeur général of the Imperial Museums and was also Princess Mathilde’s
lover, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, the novelist Edmond-François-Valentin
About, the polymath Alfred Maury, and the trio of positivist intellectuals,
Ernest Renan, Émile Littré, and Hyppolite Taine. As an intimate of Princess
Mathilde, Viollet-le-Duc could not miss the Comte de Nieuwerkerke’s famous
Friday salon in his sumptuous apartments in the Louvre, where one met all
the important members of the artistic community, especially painters and
sculptors. Viollet-le-Duc’s acquaintance with artists is confirmed by his
membership of the first and most famous of the artists’ circles that were so
important to the artistic life of the Second Empire: the elite Cercle de l’union
artistique founded in 1860, familiarly known as the “Mirlitons,” where leading
artists mingled with leading socialites.6 In their lavish building off the Place
the gothic put to use 225
7.1 Charles
Marville. Portrait
of E.-E. Violletle-Duc. 1865.
Photograph.
MAP. © Ministère
de la Culture /
Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand
Palais / Art
Resource, NY
Vendôme with its own sky-lit exhibition gallery, he would encounter Baron
Gustave-Samuel-James de Rothschild, Ludovic Halévy, Jean-Léon Gérôme,
Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Jacques-Ignace Hittorff, Louis Gounod, Franz
Liszt, Théophile Gautier (again), Octave Feuillet, Jean-Baptiste-Édouard
Detaille, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet, and
others. According to the Goncourt brothers Edmond and Jules, Viollet-leDuc was well able to maneuver in these various demanding quarters, quick
enough at repartee with the likes of Gustave Flaubert (who would send him
an autographed copy of L’éducation sentimentale), Gautier, and the Goncourt
brothers themselves.7 By the late 1850s, Viollet-le-Duc had indeed acquired
that self-possessed if discreet assurance of manner which seems to have
left a strong impression on anyone who came in contact with him (Fig. 7.1).
Having learned from Mérimée to control his emotions and feelings perfectly,
he kept a pleasantly tranquil demeanor, never losing his temper, always
226 architecture and the historical imagination
7.2 Title
page from
E.-E. Viollet-leDuc, Dictionnaire
raisonné de
l’architecture,
vol. 1, 1858.
Wood engraving
vignette by E.
Guillaumot.
Private collection.
This title page
is identical to
the original
1854 edition
capable of entertaining conversation. Given
his uncompromising opinions on architectural
and artistic matters, one could have expected
a more severe or fiery temperament. Instead,
he remained calm and benevolent, happy to
lend a hand to anyone and to do justice to
his numerous collaborators. Deep down, he
remained somewhat of a misanthrope, but
he was able to keep up an amiable front and
play his part in the various power circles of
the Second Empire. He kept that poise and
affability not just in court circles, but in all
arenas of his professional activities, whether
it be government commissions, construction
sites, or the battlefield in 1870.
Viollet-le-Duc’s position at the center of
the cultural politics of the Second Empire
would be skillfully exploited when plotting
a coup against the École des Beaux-Arts in
the early 1860s with Mérimée. But one of its
earliest benefits, as noted previously, was his
nomination in March 1853 as Inspecteur général
des édifices diocésains, a post from which he was
able to expand his influence over the design and
restoration of French ecclesiastical buildings.
The decree of nomination was dated March 7, 1853, only weeks before he
set to work on his magnum opus, the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
française du XIe au XVIe siècle (Fig. 7.2). A pre-publication announcement
appeared in the Journal de la librairie on April 30, 1853, the first installment
appearing on June 16 that year.8 His nomination and the launching of this
publishing venture were key to his securing a controlling position within
French patrimonial institutions. The Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture was
a remarkably effective organ of his new found authority. Such an ambitious
enterprise certainly explains why Viollet-le-Duc would have lost interest in
pursuing his serialized articles in Daly’s Revue générale.
Before we turn to analyze the Dictionnaire raisonné, it is important to
underscore that Viollet-le-Duc’s masterwork, like his “Essai sur l’origine,”
was an enterprise couched within Second Empire politics. Historians have
not emphasized enough that the launching of the Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture immediately followed the declaration of the empire in late
1852. One of the theses that runs through the series of volumes is that a
return to the Gothic is not merely a means of bringing architecture back
to its true principles, but an attempt to regenerate France itself, an idea
perfectly attuned to Louis-Napoléon’s goal of “restoring” French society.
The testimony of the Duc Jean-Gilbert-Victor-Fialin de Persigny—among
the gothic put to use 227
the earliest and most ardent Bonapartists—is quite eloquent: he wrote to
Viollet-le-Duc of his being “absolutely amazed” by the Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture, calling it “the best book on architecture ever written;” a work,
he adds, “stamped by genius, common sense, eternal truth.” For Persigny,
Viollet-le-Duc is “his natural leader of a new school,” making it clear that
he understood the Dictionnaire raisonné’s goal in moral and nationalist
terms. He ends his letter by expressing his hope that the government would
give the author of the Dictionnaire raisonné “the means to achieve the great
revolution we must today accomplish in the arts.”9
Persigny was writing in 1868, after the Beaux-Arts affair, and when he had
lost much of his political influence. Yet, from the beginning, the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture was a venture deliberately tied to Second Empire
politics. This is well exemplified by the publication, under separate cover (and
slightly augmented), of the section on military architecture in the first volume
of the Dictionnaire raisonné. Titled Essai sur l’architecture militaire au moyen âge,
the volume appeared in early December 1854, simultaneously with the first
volume of the Dictionnaire raisonné.10 Dedicated to Mérimée, it was above all
a eulogy to the creative inventiveness of France when menaced by invaders,
documenting the extraordinary architectural resources the French developed
in order to resist enemies. Viollet-le-Duc’s description of the vivacity and
celerity of warriors, capable of adapting instantly to new conditions, building
extraordinary military machinery on the spot, was captivating. Celebrating
the military men’s resistance to routine, the Essai sur l’architecture militaire
au moyen âge was a potent instrument in Viollet-le-Duc’s arsenal of weapons
to be used against the “poncifs” of the École des Beaux-Arts. But one of its
goals was also to attract the attention of Napoléon III and his court. Limited
to 500 copies, the Essai sur l’architecture militaire au moyen âge was a luxurious
publication aimed at a select audience. By its topic alone, it would have
commanded the immediate interest of the emperor, who was a great scholar
of military engineering,11 and whose history of artillery Viollet-le-Duc
was careful to quote and praise.12 Moreover, its release coincided with the
escalation of the Crimean crisis toward a major armed conflict. Whether it was
Viollet-le-Duc or Balthazar Bance—the enterprising editor of the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture—who first saw the opportunity, the publication could
not have been more timely.13 Not unlike Vitruvius in the age of Augustus,
Viollet-le-Duc launched his ambitious investigation of French architecture
in the first years of the Second Empire with an eloquent statement on his
country’s military strength and architecture’s role in it.
The Essai sur l’architecture militaire au moyen âge cast the entire Dictionnaire
raisonné within the militarist thinking that legitimized the advent of the Second
Empire, in the same way that the myth of a vital and rationalizing French
Middle Ages engendered a historical deepening of the cult of the nation that
was central to Bonapartism. Passages from the Essai sur l’architecture militaire
au moyen âge provide salient clues. When writing, for instance, that “in France,
inferiority in warfare never lasts very long; a nation that is bellicose by instinct
228 architecture and the historical imagination
learns more from its defeats than its successes,”14 Viollet-le-Duc feeds upon
the idea that the Second Empire restores the military strength of the First and
that it will be able to revenge the humiliation of 1815. That France was now
allied with England in the Crimean adventure temporarily overshadowed
that Bonapartist ambition. But the war against Russia at least instantiated
Louis-Napoléon’s resolve to mount an aggressive foreign policy. Viollet-leDuc wholeheartedly supported Napoléon III’s authoritarian regime, which
he saw as the application of a principle. In private notes dating from 1858, this
is how he describes it:
Emperor Napoléon III represents a principle, that of authority. His government
has been able to establish some roots in French soil only from the day that this
authority manifested itself through a powerful foreign policy. The nation then
arrived at the simple reasoning: “Since our government is now regaining the
upper hand in relation to other governments, it is strong; we must therefore obey
and devote ourselves to it.” Because our country needs to be devoted, it does
not understand the authority of the law, the enforcement of public law; it only
understands and admires the moral force, the work of intelligence, in a word. In
France [chez nous], the will of a man of genius can always count on public devotion,
even at the expense of the written law.15
Thank goodness, Viollet-le-Duc ended this reflection by adding: “It is all very
nice, but rather dangerous.”
The Dictionnaire raisonné as a Publishing Venture
One obvious aim of the Essai sur l’architecture militaire au moyen âge was to
reach an audience beyond architects and archaeologists. It certainly would
have appealed to the military, as John Henry Parker suggested in the preface
to the second edition of the English translation.16 As has been mentioned,
Viollet-le-Duc had contacts among the highest-ranking military officers,
with whom he discussed military architecture, and the book clearly served
to extend this didactic effort as the vignette on the title page suggests (Fig.
7.3). The Essai sur l’architecture militaire au moyen âge—for which Viollet-leDuc received his first medal from the Institut de France—thus broadened the
reach and opened fresh possibilities for the more extended enterprise of the
ten-volume Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture.
The Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture cannot, of course, be envisaged
solely as a political instrument. It unquestionably ranks among the two or three
most influential architectural publications produced in nineteenth-century
Europe, and had immense reach within the discipline. Its greatest significance
thus lay within the institutional framework of architecture, introducing an
entirely new mode of representation and dissemination of architectural
knowledge. This uniqueness is most obvious in the structure of its content,
its format, and its illustrations, but its nature as a publishing venture was also
novel. That Viollet-le-Duc sought to broaden his public by issuing a separate
the gothic put to use 229
volume on military architecture is only one
sign of his intention to create a wholly new
form of publication with increased power of
diffusion.
Béatrice Bouvier, in her very useful work
on the French architectural press in the
nineteenth century, identifies the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture as the finest, and by
far most profitable in the rich collection of
architectural publications by Balthazar Bance,
its first editor. Bance’s publishing house was
an old business, established during the First
Empire. It specialized first in prints, and from
the Restoration, in books on architecture
luxuriously illustrated, including works by
Jean-Charles Krafft, Pierre-Louis Baltard,
Jacques-Ignace Hittorff, and Jean Rondelet,
among others. Bance had taken over the
direction from his father Jacques-Louis just a
few years before the 1848 Revolution.17 The
firm survived the turmoil relatively well, but
after 1850 sought to create more accessible
and popular publications, starting with the
profitable journal, the Encyclopédie d’architecture
edited with Bance’s close friend, the architect
Victor Calliat. In 1851, the architect Adolphe Lance, one of the inspectors
overseeing the restoration of the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis directed
by Viollet-le-Duc, joined the two men, taking responsibility for editorial
matters. First conceived as a folio of prints documenting current architectural
practice (privileging monographic surveys of key buildings), the Encyclopédie
d’architecture quickly expanded to become a fully-fledged journal equaling, in
terms of quality, Daly’s Revue générale de l’architecture et des travaux publics, and
adopting a resolutely progressive, rationalist editorial policy not so different
from Daly’s. But Bance and Lance were especially keen supporters of the NeoGothic faction now led by Viollet-le-Duc. In 1851, the Encyclopédie d’architecture
published no less than 12 plates on the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris.
By 1857, it had published an astounding 75 plates on that project. Only the
restoration of Sainte-Chapelle (64 plates) and Labrouste’s Bibliothèque SainteGeneviève (37 plates) came relatively close to this in terms of coverage.
There is no record to document the extent of Balthazar Bance’s role in
shaping the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, but he certainly recognized
its potential right from the start: unlike most of his other publications, he
kept the publishing and reproduction rights for himself.18 It is difficult to
understand why Viollet-le-Duc would have signed over the copyrights.
Was it simply a sign of uncertainty about what was, after all, his first book
7.3 Title page
from E.-E. Violletle-Duc, Essai
sur l’architecture
militaire au
moyen âge, 1854.
Unsigned wood
engraving
vignette. Private
collection
230 architecture and the historical imagination
publication? The original contract with Bance has not been found, but the
Getty Research Institute holds a few invoices sent by Viollet-le-Duc to AugusteJean Morel, who took over after the death of Bance in 1862.19 At the time of
these invoices (July and September 1863), Viollet-le-Duc was receiving 200
francs per installment. The nine volumes of text comprise 301 installments,
so, if that figure was maintained throughout, Viollet-le-Duc would have
received no less than 60,000 francs for the whole enterprise. It is a colossal
sum, but it turned out to be considerably less than the “market” value of the
publishing rights of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture.20 When Bance’s
properties were liquidated in 1862, the rights (including the remaining copies)
were estimated at 190,000 francs.21 Later that year, the whole lot, with the
rights, was bought by Auguste-Jean Morel, who saw to the publication of the
last three volumes. Like Bance before him, Morel would become very close
to Viollet-le-Duc, editing virtually all his works (with the notable exception
of the series of Histoires published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel and his book on Le
massif du Mont Blanc published by Jules Baudry) and supporting his ideas.
The publishing history of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture does not
end in 1868, the year when the first edition was finally completed. Bance had
already begun a republication of the first four volumes back in 1858. Morel
undertook yet another reprinting of the first volumes sometime after 1867,
with a whole new edition of the ten volumes available around 1870. From
then on, it is more difficult to untangle the various editions (or reprintings)
of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, as individual volumes were being
republished more or less continuously, roughly adhering to the original
format.22 A detailed publishing history remains to be done. Issues such as
the number of copies sold and the exact nature of the audience (aside from
architects and archaeologists) have never been clarified. But the distribution
of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture was unquestionably extremely
broad, reaching ecclesiastics, historians, archaeologists, architects, and a
more general public interested in the national heritage or in the Middle Ages.
With the Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l’époque carolingienne à la
Renaissance, whose first volume was published in 1858, Viollet-le-Duc would
reach an even larger audience, including painters and theatre set designers.
“I write for everybody, that has always been my goal,” wrote Viollet-le-Duc
in 1876.23 Mérimée’s laudatory and extensive reviews of the various volumes
in the very official Le Moniteur Universel helped disseminate the work to the
general public. Yet I don’t think Viollet-le-Duc could have anticipated the
extent of the book’s success. Not only was it continuously reprinted until the
end of the century, but it has hardly lost its attraction since, dovetailing with
the ever-increasing fascination for historical recreations (and specifically of
the Middle Ages) in the West and Asia even today. It is as if Viollet-le-Duc
had crafted the perfect vehicle for navigating the fantasy world of the Middle
Ages. Ruskin’s Stones of Venice appealed to the same sense of discovery, but
its appeal is more literary, while the pleasure associated with the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture is practical and concrete. It entices children and
the gothic put to use 231
adults alike, not with words alone, but with the easily handled volumes,
their drawings, and their didactic yet palpably written descriptions, and the
complete graphic environment generated by their combination within an
alphabetic order. Ruskin had, of course, taken great care with the format, form,
and illustrations of The Stones of Venice, yet the book can be read in a different
format without completely losing its mesmerizing qualities. The Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, in contrast, is a complete design whose composition
cannot be modified without a fundamental loss. One of the most interesting
facts about its publishing history is that it was nearly always published in its
original format, using the same blocks for the woodcuts, or later, using offset
to produce “reprints.” Its form is an integral part of its content, as numerous
commentators have already emphasized.
Viollet-le-Duc’s magnum opus was not conceived at the outset as the tenvolume monument it eventually became. In the publicity issued prior to
publication, it was announced as a two-volume venture to contain 400 entries
and 1,300 woodcuts extending over 960 pages. Roughly a year later, in early
spring of 1854, Adolphe-Napoléon Didron noted in Annales archéologiques that
instead of two volumes, the work would comprise four. A few months later,
the Bibliographie de la France presented the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
as aiming for an astounding 800 entries and 4,500 woodcuts,24 an ambition
maintained at least until the publication of the second volume in 1856. In
fact, it would end up with considerably less—427 articles and 3,745 figures—
but the length of each article was significantly expanded from what was
planned in the 1854 announcement. In its final form, the Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture numbered no less than 5,000 pages. It was produced over a
period of 15 years, the last installment appearing in May 1868.
This evolution is revealing. If we consider the original plan of a twovolume dictionary of 400 entries with 1,300 woodcuts spreading over roughly
1,000 pages, each article would average two and half pages, with three to four
figures each. So, at the inception, the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture was
contemplated as a practical lexicon, not unlike John Henry Parker’s Glossary of
Terms used in Grecian, Roman, Italian and Gothic Architecture, first published in
two volumes in 1836, with several expanded editions rapidly following. In his
prospectus, Viollet-le-Duc had singled out British glossaries as being “among
the most useful and most enjoyable,” because “within a restricted space,
they give numerous examples of every part that goes into the construction
of religious buildings.”25 There is no question that Viollet-le-Duc had in mind
Parker’s popular Glossary, which largely dominated British archaeological
publications, and which he would quote repeatedly in the Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture. During his trip to England in the spring of 1850, he had taken
time to meet Parker in Oxford, and a friendly correspondence was maintained
thereafter. Parker’s Glossary was slightly smaller in format and much less farreaching in its content, but it was a remarkable effort to codify architectural
terminology, especially with respect to medieval architecture. It is also notable
for being one of the earliest archaeological works in which small woodcut
232 architecture and the historical imagination
vignettes were inserted in the text, a mode of illustration that Viollet-le-Duc
would exploit marvelously in the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture.
A perusal of the first 50 pages of the first volume confirms that it was
originally envisaged as a lexicon, much like that of Parker’s: the 20 articles
or so preceding the heading “Arc,” are less than three pages each on average.
The figures tend to be mere thumbnails of a taxonomic character. At the article
“Arc,” however, Viollet-le-Duc jumps to 44 pages. The figures start to be more
varied, adopting in some cases the distinctive anatomical character that will
eventually make such a strong mark on the whole. Only under the heading
“Architecture,” however, does true graphic experimentation begin. By the end
of the first volume, the pace and character of the rest of the Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture seem firmly set in place, even though the figures would reach
their ultimate level of quality only in the second volume.
The Dictionnaire raisonné as Graphic Environment
As it grew to a more encyclopedic scale, the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
took up more ambitious models than Parker’s lexicon. The most obvious
precedent for Viollet-le-Duc is Quatremère de Quincy’s two volumes of the
Encyclopédie méthodique–Architecture, a remarkable and influential summation
of classical architectural knowledge published at the turn of the nineteenth
century. In his early review (May 1853) of Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture in the Encyclopédie d’architecture, Adolphe Lance introduced
Viollet-le-Duc’s work as a medieval counterpart to Quatremère de Quincy’s
masterwork, intended “for those who wish to learn or practice the French
architectural language.”26 As Quatremère de Quincy sought to regulate and
deepen classical architectural knowledge, Viollet-le-Duc wished to ascertain
the origin and foundation of the “old French way of building,” resurrecting,
among other things, its construction terminology.
Though he had originally planned for them, Quatremère de Quincy’s
contribution to the Encyclopédie méthodique never included figures. Given
the crucial role of the illustrations in the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture,
we must seek other models. An inescapable precedent is Denis Diderot and
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné
des sciences, des arts et des métiers, a benchmark for the composition of any
systematic illustrated dictionary. The analytical and didactic character of the
famous plates of the Encyclopédie has obvious kinship with the figures of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture. Indeed, a governing thought of Violletle-Duc’s publication is borrowed from this masterpiece of the Enlightenment:
clear language must lead to clear ideas. In architectural terms, it meant that a
precise knowledge of terminology led to rational building. Jacques-François
Blondel, a contributor to the Encyclopédie, made exactly that point in the
preface to the second volume of his Cours d’architecture: “Those destined to
practice architecture” ought to study “the etymology of each of the terms
the gothic put to use 233
of their art,” so as “to succeed in making fewer mistakes in the choice and
application of the [architectural] members.”27 Good knowledge of the terms
of one’s art insured a basic norm of competence within a discipline. Without
question, that goal remained a primary one for Viollet-le-Duc.
This being said, the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture also substantially
departs from its Enlightenment precursor. The shift is particularly visible in
the way the illustrations work with the text in a hybrid ensemble. One of
the Dictionnaire raisonné’s great achievements is undoubtedly to have brought
clarity to a complex topic, but the clarity never loses touch with the complexity
of its subject. Complexity encroaches upon a taxonomy of the clearly distinct
and visible. Following Michel Foucault’s now classic description, the move
from the Encyclopédie to the Dictionnaire, is the shift from the Enlightenment
paradigm of representation to the nineteenth-century episteme of
organization. With Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, we
conduct an obsessive auscultation of internal parts of churches, monasteries,
or castles. As we peel off layers, examine hidden corners, we get the feeling of
being initiated into a complex and previously unknown world—a sense quite
different from that of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, which brought into clear view
the various aspects of his contemporary world.
It must be stressed at the outset that Viollet-le-Duc’s magnum opus,
in contrast to both Diderot’s Encyclopédie and Quatremère de Quincy’s
contribution to the Encyclopédie méthodique, is an archaeological manual, which
in terms of genre, would align him more with the great antiquarian works
of the Enlightenment by the Benedictine Bernard de Montfaucon or AnneClaude de Tubières-Grimoard de Pestels de Lévis, Comte de Caylus, rather
than the encyclopedia. It may be stating the obvious, but architectural
historians have so often discussed Viollet-le-Duc’s magnum opus as an
organ to disseminate an architectural doctrine that its first aim is often
forgotten. One should not confuse the architectural thesis defended with
the nature of the work itself. Viollet-le-Duc’s two Dictionnaires—the nine
volumes of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe
siècle and the subsequent six volumes of the Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier
français de l’époque carolingienne à la Renaissance—document the history of
medieval architecture and its allied arts, and take their place alongside the
great nineteenth-century historical summations such as Étienne Vacherot’s
Histoire critique de l’école d’Alexandrie (1843) or Émile Littré’s Dictionnaire de la
langue française (1863). Outdated in some of its aspects, it nonetheless remains
today a useful reference for medievalists. It is thus not a work of architectural
theory in the narrow sense, as was, for example, Léonce Reynaud’s Traité
d’architecture.
The Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture’s historical ambition will be the
first target of criticism for archaeologists and historians, Viollet-le-Duc having
gone beyond his remit. Charles Lenormant, whom Viollet-le-Duc knew very
well from the Commission des monuments historiques and because of his
friendship with Mérimée, wrote a rather devastating review of Viollet-le-
234 architecture and the historical imagination
Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture in the pages of the Catholic journal
Le Correspondant. According to Lenormant, Viollet-le-Duc, if among the
greatest “architectes-dessinateurs” of France, “remains an outsider to the great
[historical] debates that absorb the leading minds of our epoch.” He certainly
admired the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture as a thorough analysis of
Gothic architecture, but he mocked the book’s overarching historical theories,
calling Viollet-le-Duc an “abstracteur de quintessence.”28 Viollet-le-Duc took the
criticism unusually well. He wrote to Lenormant, thanking him for his review
and accepting his criticism. He simply justified himself by the fact that he
had to write quickly as “it was urgent to produce a work on the architecture
of the Middle Ages.”29 Lenormant was a bit unfair, given that he himself had
indulged so much in Romantic historical speculations barely a decade earlier.
But Lenormant had reneged the Romanticism of his younger days. He had
turned deeply religious after 1845—an ideological shift that inevitably colored
his evaluation of the explicitly secular thesis laid out in the Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture. But his comments do shed light on the fact that Viollet-leDuc’s work straddled architectural history and history tout court.
The most famous criticism of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture was
issued by the Hellenist and declared enemy of the Gothic, Charles-Ernest
Beulé. In the inaugural lecture of his course on Greek architecture at the
Bibliothèque impériale in late 1856, Beulé made the witty comment that would
be so often repeated—Viollet-le-Duc himself referred to it as the “spirituelle
boutade” in the preface to his Entretiens sur l’architecture 30:
In dealing with [an historical] period in which the elements of architecture are
disfigured and its rules confused, those carried away by too great an enthusiasm
lose the thread: they back up, terrified, as they candidly admit in their prefaces, and
adopt, instead of the historical genre, the form of the dictionary, which is nothing other than
randomness in alphabetical order [le hasard par ordre alphabétique][my emphasis].31
We will come back to the “désordre alphabétique.” For now, I wish to draw
attention to Beulé’s criticism that Viollet-le-Duc forced the “historical genre”
into the form of a dictionary. If the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture had
remained the two-volume technical glossary that was originally planned, it
would not have raised eyebrows. As its format was expanded to that of a full
historical treatise, however, the fragmentation was considered to have done
violence to the unity required of historical works, unless, as Beulé argued
wittily but not altogether convincingly, the history it dealt with was inherently
devoid of unity. Even sympathetic commentators singled out the problem
of discontinuities in Viollet-le-Duc Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture.
Mérimée, for example, noted that pitfall in his otherwise enthusiastic review
in Le Moniteur Universel. Commenting that “competent judges” had expressed
the fear that “a work made up of articles without any logical sequence
between them can hardly avoid a certain disorder,”32 he dispelled the blame
by observing wisely that, “any format has advantages and disadvantages.”
The alphabetic order may not be “the most logical,” concluded Mérimée,
the gothic put to use 235
“but it is incontestably the most convenient.”33 This last observation certainly
rings true when considering how scattered was Viollet-le-Duc’s life itself.
He was incessantly traveling to construction sites around the country, and
caught up in countless administrative reviews and committees associated
with his official duties. In contrast to Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc was hardly living
a scholar’s life. Thus, the dictionary form suited him well. Each heading
could be composed separately, and he was not burdened by the demands of
a continuous narrative.
Practical necessities aside, its fragmentation along a “random” matrix is
also one of the most compelling aspects of Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture. A perceptive commentator writing in the newspaper Le Nord
in 1858, noted the advantages of separate articles: “Les études détachées …
sont vives, légères, faciles à lire.”34 The dislocation brings, indeed, a lightness
in reading. There is no beginning, end, or middle. Randomly opening any
one of the nine volumes of text, we are caught up in a network of figures
and words, in what I call a graphic environment (Fig. 7.4). The attraction of
the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture stems from that wonderful sense that
opening its pages is like penetrating the intricate world of the France of the
Middle Ages. The term “penetrate” is key. Instead of being led by the thread
of a historical narration typical of the age, when we open the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, we cross a threshold, as if the Middle Ages had been
captured spatially between its covers. The shift from narration to a matrix of
architectural signs is the most crucial difference between Viollet-le-Duc’s first
articles in Annales archéologiques and the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture.
If a narrative form is still in force under many of the headings—which even,
due to their length, stretch the limits of the dictionary as a genre—the larger
context of the work and its illustrative strategy produce a different sort of
absorption. As Viollet-le-Duc himself explains in the brief postscript published
in the tenth volume, his goal was to have the readers rummaging about:
[W]e would never flatter ourselves in thinking that the Dictionnaire d’architecture
could occupy a place among those books that one opens only to retrieve a piece of
information, but then finds impossible to put down; like those rare friends with
whom one wants to have a brief word, and who end up holding us for hours under
the spell of their conversation.35
From consulting a single entry to drifting from sentence to sentence, and
figure to figure, the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, like any successful
dictionary in this regard, encourages the reader to do what the French call
fureter—literally, to ferret out, to browse. Its appeal to children and teenagers
comes precisely from the joy of discovery and the empowerment that follows:
a succession of feelings that rehearse the stages of Viollet-le-Duc’s discovery
of the Gothic, from the first moments of rapture to his complete claim on it
at Vézelay in the 1840s. The number and quality of woodcuts inserted make
the experience all the more captivating. New visual elements continually
catch the eye and claim the attention, with the result being that the object of
236 architecture and the historical imagination
7.4 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Stone
arch and floor
construction
system (left) and
structural crosssection of the
Château of HautKœnigsbourg,
near Sélestat,
Alsace (right).
Wood engravings
by A. Pégard et
H. Lavoignat.
Figs. 129
and 130 of
“Construction,”
from Dictionnaire
raisonné de
l’architecture,
vol. 4, 1859.
Private collection.
Example of
the “graphic
environment” of
the Dictionnaire
raisonné.
study appears more vast than the discourse that describes it. A dictionary’s
discontinuities are both its drawback and its chief advantage: it fragments
knowledge but simultaneously generates a profusion that makes the
experience of reading endless and always renewed. The nineteenth century
is, of course, the great era of labyrinthine “digression-as-world-making.” The
extended chapters dealing with cetology in the tale of Moby Dick comes to
mind, with the adventures of Captain Ahab luring the reader into the world
of the deep sea and the whole culture of whaling in the nineteenth century.
In art criticism, Ruskin’s Modern Painters is the perfect example of a work
where digressions are used to fascinate the reader. As Tim Hilton recently
noted, “few of the most accomplished passages of Modern Painters are directly
concerned with painting.”36
The Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture’s interstitiality—its organization
where the whole is disseminated between fragments—was already recognized
as the source of its special dynamic by Hubert Damisch in his classic essay
of 1964.37 For Damisch, that particularity of the Dictionnaire raisonné partook
of the insight of modern structuralism according to which meaning can be
generated only within a “differentiated” system, in the difference between
signs. There is perhaps no obligation to resort to Saussure in order to make
the point. After all, the pleasure of living in the space between signs was
quite familiar to the nineteenth century—Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de
Maupin provided probably the most striking example of a work engulfing
the reader in a complex literary matrix. As Michel Foucault expressed it
succinctly, the nineteenth century’s “erudite dream” grows “among signs,
… in the interstice of repetitions and commentaries.”38 Partly for that reason,
the gothic put to use 237
dictionaries enjoyed a privileged place in the Romantic library. Alexandre
Dumas, for instance, bankrupt for good at the end of his life, turned to writing
what he claimed to be the type of work closest to his heart, a dictionary—
in this case his Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine published in 1873, in which
his insatiable appetite for words was matched with his insatiable appetite
for food. But the case of Théophile Gautier remains exemplary. Charles
Baudelaire reports that when he first met Gautier as a young man, the latter’s
first question—asked “with a terrible look of distrust, as if to test me”—was
whether “I liked to read dictionaries or not.” “With luck,” said Baudelaire,
“I had been taken very young with lexicomania, and I saw that my answer
was gaining me respect.”39 We can surmise that what Dumas, Gautier, and
Baudelaire found appealing in dictionaries was not so much the trésor de la
langue, to use the conventional expression, but the strange and rare treasures
found within language, unexpected signs suddenly grabbing one’s attention.
It is the reason why Gautier warned Baudelaire that “the writer who did not
know how to say everything, for whom an idea however strange, … however
unexpected—falling like a stone from the moon—caught him unprepared
and without material to give it substance, was not a writer.”40 Every word, like
a stone falling from the moon, was a world and the writer’s task was precisely
to unravel it. To bury oneself within the pages of a dictionary was the perfect
means to make the Romantic subjectivity blossom, because language was its
natural environment.
It may be presumptuous to associate Viollet-le-Duc the rationalist with
Romantic semantic drifting. After all, Viollet-le-Duc was not so much a
consumer of dictionaries, as a writer of one, seeking to achieve all the clarity
that the genre promises. But Romanticism’s delight in language does help
us grasp the type of relation he wished to establish with the Middle Ages.
One aspect of dictionaries that certainly appealed to him was that they were
books not to be read but to be used. “Dictionaries, by their very form,” wrote
Jean le Rond d’Alembert in the preface of the Encyclopédie, “are made only
to be consulted, and resist any continuous reading.”41 They are handbooks,
both literally and figuratively. The reader “handles” them, in order to retrieve
information. That he may get absorbed in the process (as Viollet-le-Duc
wished) is incidental. Hence, despite its appeal to a mythologized past—and
despite the great sense of discovery it generates—the Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture has a relation to history that is free of nostalgia. In fact, it is
militantly anti-nostalgic—it nips the impulse right in the bud. Compared to
the Stones of Venice—to pursue our parallel with Ruskin—Viollet-le-Duc’s
dictionary of the Middle Ages is the past put to use: it is future-oriented.
Ruskin’s prose was constructed from a state of melancholy, giving us,
in the tone of a lament, among the most fascinating pages on architecture
ever written. If the Stones of Venice did provide an architectural lesson for
contemporary architects, they needed to find the strength to dispel the sense
that the Middle Ages were irrevocably lost. Viollet-le-Duc, for his part,
provided a euphoric program of action. He once admitted that he liked writing
238 architecture and the historical imagination
only “in order to solve difficulties”: “the purely descriptive genre leaves me
cold.”42 A contagious taste for construction indeed emerges from the pages
of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, ready to reanimate the “native
originality and the independent spirit that make up the national genius.”43
Viollet-le-Duc conceives medieval architecture as a language available for use,
ready for the battlefield. In his review of one of Viollet-le-Duc’s late books,
art critic Philippe Burty wrote that the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
was the “place where we were all educated as critics, where we borrowed the
armament to resist.”44 Burty was referring to Viollet-le-Duc’s militant antiacademic doctrine. But the Dictionnaire raisonné, with its status as a special
type of historical manual, was particularly fit for battle.
Barry Bergdoll has laid out some of the sources and motivations of Violletle-Duc’s interest in the field of linguistics, particularly in the context of his
criticism of Vaudoyer’s Marseilles Cathedral.45 Bergdoll rightly identifies
the role of the linguistic analogy in consolidating Viollet-le-Duc’s search
for synthetic unity in architecture, helping to emphasize the purity of a
national language in contrast to hybridized inventions. As an example of
the latter, Viollet-le-Duc repeatedly referred to the macaronic, a burlesque
jargon mixing Latin and popular dialects: “Why try to compose a macaronic
language, when we have at hand a beautiful and simple language?”,46 he
commented in 1853 about Vaudoyer’s first eclectic project for Marseilles. But
as the quote suggests, the value of a set language for Viollet-le-Duc lay as
much in its availability as in its inherent purity: we have it “at hand” (“sous la
main”) like his dictionary. Gothic, pretended Viollet-le-Duc, was that “French”
architectural language ready at hand. A national language is in circulation as
a living medium of exchange that transcends any individual man’s capacity
for invention. Language is not a piece of work, stabilized in its contours,
but a kind of productivity, a practice. Its terms establish a set of relations, a
potentiality that needs to be put to use—a power reserve contained, as it were,
between the covers of a dictionary. Damisch’s notion that the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture demonstrated a sort of structuralism avant la lettre is
accurate. But rather than draw anachronistically on Saussure or Claude LéviStrauss, we can refer to the proto-structuralism of Wilhelm von Humboldt to
understand the conception of language that underlies the Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture.47 In Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und
ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts (On Language.
The Diversity of Human Language-Structure and its Influence on the Mental
Development of Mankind), a text published posthumously in 1836, Humboldt
defined language as an activity which is the expression of a culture’s interior
being, a dynamic élan vital that shapes our specific relation to the world. In
this sense, language could be conceived as the archetypical form of artistic
creation. “It is like a second world,” to use Hans Aarsleff’s description of the
relation between language and thinking in Humboldt, “a second world in
which we know both our own selves and the outward face of things, like a
middle ground between subjective being and objective existence.”48 It follows
the gothic put to use 239
that the character of a nation is primarily disclosed in language, not as a passive
instrument but as an act, a truly creative performance of the mind.49 Likewise,
the words that comprise Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture,
and its companion Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier, were not meant as mere
designative signs hovering abstractly above reality, but rather were conceived
as a field of action embodying the very practice of a nation, from the way
it constructs its fortresses and builds its churches to the manner in which it
dresses and designs furniture. To consolidate in a dictionary that national
form of practice was akin to the institution of tools to stabilize and homogenize
the French language across the nation, as Luc Ferry would develop during
the Third Republic. In Viollet-le-Duc’s case, it was not about normalizing an
existing language, but “reawakening” a dormant one, having ironically to
“resuscitate” old construction terms used in the Middle Ages in order to lay
out the terms for a “living” medium of exchange. For the sole description
of a siege, for instance, he unearthed hundreds of forgotten terms, without
which, as Charles Blanc noted, “nothing is particularized, nothing is precise,
nothing is clear”: archères, bretèches, barbacane, calabres, chats, échelades, hourds,
lices, mangonneaux, sagettes, viretons, to name only a few.50 In the manuscript
dossiers of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, held in the Archives
départementales de l’Oise, in Beauvais, there are endless alphabetical lists
of the most recondite construction terms used in old medieval French texts,
a compilation probably made by Viollet-le-Duc’s father. Once reawakened,
that old language should “naturally” become active again. Modern architects
would then be able to act within “the spirit that drove ancient medieval
builders.”51 Borrowing an expression that Viollet-le-Duc himself had used to
describe the Gothic, we can say that the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
was “a means to produce, rather than a product.”52 It emphasized language
as a practice and a force, not as a system of signs frozen in time, which is why
the dictionary was the most adequate format.
Arousing Curiosity: The Figures of the Dictionnaire raisonné
The liveliness of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture—its contagious
sense of construction—comes largely from the profusion of illustrations,
which are by far the most striking aspect of the work. Their sheer number
is overwhelming, no less than 3,745 spread over nine volumes, all of them
woodcut engravings inserted in the text. Remarkably delicate, without
accented shadows, these drawings of varying sizes have the preciosity of
a palimpsest, bearing traces of secret medieval procedures. It is generally
acknowledged that the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture’s figures have
been the chief vehicle of its influence in the history of modern architecture.
Charles Eastlake, for instance, noted that following the publication of the first
volumes, Gothic architects in England began to introduce French details in
their work: “Decorative sculpture assumed a different character. The small and
240 architecture and the historical imagination
intricately carved foliage of capitals … gave place to bolder and simpler forms
of ornament. … Arch mouldings grew less complex. … From a constructive
point of view, [examples of modern Gothic became] more ‘muscular’.”53 These
transformations, according to Eastlake, can be almost entirely attributed to
the influence of the images running through the thousand of pages of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture.
Despite their captivating character, Viollet-le-Duc never intended the
illustrations to overwhelm the text. His goal was for the reader’s attention
to be evenly divided between text and images. All his life he argued that
drawing was just another mode of thinking, coextensive with language. In
an 1874 letter to his publisher Jules Hetzel, he criticized the dominance of
picturesque views in guidebooks and illustrated journals, spelling out in two
brief sentences his whole conception of book illustration: “The images in an
illustrated book must incite the reading of the text, it must arouse curiosity
by demanding an explanation. Otherwise one looks at the images, and never
bothers reading the text.”54
The myriad intricate architectural fragments drawn by Viollet-le-Duc
indeed “arouse curiosity.” Though mostly in perspective, they almost never
present normal views of monuments. Instead, they feature a minute, myopic
scanning of the fabric, drawing the eye into hidden corners, showing partial
views in which layers are peeled away in order to study the inner workings.
The whole framework is pulled to pieces, every joint exposed. Viollet-le-Duc
does not miss a detail: “Nothing is too abstruse—nothing is too insignificant
for explanation.”55 It is indeed from an extended state of “curiosity” that
readers of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture initiate their reading.
“Curiosity” used as a substantive, has always been related to
antiquarianism. Curiosities are the sort of bric à brac or objects that attract
collectors because of their singular character rather than their intrinsic
artistic value, a trait that resonates in medieval art, which instilled a
sense of the unfamiliar. Stephen Bann recently drew attention to the
historical phenomenon of curiosity, studying its occurrence in its “classic”
seventeenth-century form, but also in its less discussed nineteenth-century
phase where it makes up, according to him, a strong but somewhat repressed
undercurrent within visual culture.56 For Bann, curiosity means a fascination
with the “specificity” of an object outside stable classifications, the passion
for curiosities in the nineteenth century compensating for the dominance
of science.57 It is tied to the experience of otherness and object-hood, and
thus works to subvert the stability of the subject–object relation, thanks to
which identity can be redefined. Within the arts, Bann sees the appeal of
“curiosities” as a sensibility turned against academic tradition, whereby
objects acquired “a status of semiotic hybridity, combining several layers
of signification.”58 It was thus, he argues, an important but often neglected
vector in the development of modernism.
For pundits of academic art, “curiosities” indeed carried negative value. A
classic formulation could be, for example, Quatremère de Quincy’s dismissal
the gothic put to use 241
of medieval stained glass by saying that “it can no longer be but an object of
curiosity.”59 The opposition between the objet d’art and the objet de curiosité
endured all through the nineteenth century. Viollet-le-Duc himself would
denounce in 1862 the “myopic judgement [critique microscopique] that is
occupied with an amour curieux of the infinitely small or miniature, of jewels,
crockery, and everyday objects, … things which in common parlance we
characterize using the resuscitated old French word bibelot.”60 Later, however,
when trying to argue for the status of objets d’art for Napoléon III’s collection
of arms and armor after the Franco–Prussian War, Viollet-le-Duc would speak
more sympathetically of curiosities: “Does an object lose its artistic status
because … it is sought after by des curieux?”61 He was immensely attracted
to the medieval paraphernalia and objects, as the two thousand images of
furniture, utensils, musical instruments, games, tools, clothing, jewelry, and
arms in the Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier bear ample witness. The ensemble
of figures of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture and the Dictionnaire
raisonné du mobilier constitutes nothing less than a formidable collection of
curiosities, their singularity not obliterated by their being implicated in a
didactic discourse. After all, a sense of curiosity is not antithetical to a desire
for knowledge; this desire, in order to become “curiosity,” must be directed
toward things that resist categorization.62 Viollet-le-Duc’s Middle Ages,
thanks to the “curious” images proliferating in his two dictionaries, make
up an imaginary land. Even the exhaustive completeness—which, at one
level, is antithetical to the special value accorded to the selection of objects
for a personal collection of curiosities—help produce the effect of immersive
fantasy.
Text and Image
The Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture’s woodcuts have one distinct
characteristic: they seamlessly insert themselves within the space of the text,
their line weight kept identical to the tone value of the typography so as to
ensure perfect continuity between images and words. This aspect is worth
considering, as it touches directly upon Viollet-le-Duc’s special manipulation
of the process of woodcut illustration at the basis of the production of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture. With the notable exception of his
Entretiens, this reproduction technique dominates all of Viollet-le-Duc’s major
publications, from his first articles in Annales archéologiques to the series of
Histoires published by Jules Hetzel. In a late letter to historian and archaeologist
Eugène Hucher, Viollet-le-Duc claims having tried many different techniques
in the course of his publication career—notably in the Gazette des architectes
et du bâtiment and the Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier—but that “none can
replace woodcut engravings” as all other methods have “a cold, monotonous
appearance that quickly bores the reader.”63 Woodcuts alone are able to
“arouse curiosity.”
242 architecture and the historical imagination
Viollet-le-Duc was, of course, not the only one to have exploited that
mode of reproduction, woodcut engraving being probably the single most
significant illustration technique of a century in which images in publishing
achieved an unprecedented level of prominence. Woodcut engraving was
the only means to juxtapose image and text on the same page obviating the
need for a segregated set of plates: their method of pressing being identical to
typography, woodblocks could simply be inserted in the printing press besides
letter types.64 That unique advantage—with the added one of a considerably
lower cost when compared with steel engraving—insured the technique’s
triumph within nineteenth-century visual culture: a tidal wave of woodcut
illustrations invaded the pages of books, periodicals, and newspapers aimed
at the mass market. The technique was particularly welcomed during the
Romantic era, when small vignettes were used to manipulate the act of reading:
the illustrated page made palpable the interdependence of text and image
characteristic of the Romantic revolution in language.65 Woodcut vignettes
broke forth from the depth of the page, troubling insofar as they brought to
life the otherwise contained world of the written word. It is perhaps in this
regard that the success of illustrated publications in the nineteenth century
can be said to partake of the century’s passion for “curiosities.” Perusing a
volume of Édouard Charton’s illustrated Le Magasin pittoresque brings about
an experience akin to that of a cabinet of curiosities: the same wonder, odd
and unexpected juxtapositions, and exchange or ambivalence between the
artistic and the scientific. The woodcut engravings of J. J. Grandville often
reproduced in Charton’s journal well exemplify the charm and unsettling
power of such incongruous juxtapositions.
In point of fact, the first significant French architectural or archaeological
publication to rely entirely on woodcut illustrations appeared in Le Magasin
pittoresque: Léon Vaudoyer and Albert Lenoir’s Études d’architecture en France
published in installments between 1839 and 1852. It was a bold decision on the
part of the two ambitious architects to publish in an illustrated weekly, and
to trust woodcuts to illustrate their first important work. As Barry Bergdoll
well observed, they wanted to write a popular history reaching the greatest
number of readers possible, following their belief that architecture was a great
collective enterprise and that the architect had a social mission.66 The images
were chosen accordingly: no plans, an abundance of elevations, and the
favoring of picturesque views, akin to other imagery typically published in Le
Magasin pittoresque. But putting aside the context in which it was published,
Lenoir and Vaudoyer did little to exploit the potential of the new type of
illustrations to arouse the curiosity of their readers.
Viollet-le-Duc, for his part, had been made aware early of the power of
Romantic illustrations by his collaboration on Baron Isidore-Justin-Séverin
Taylor’s Voyages pittoresques et romantiques en ancienne France. To produce the
very lively borders discussed earlier in this volume, Viollet-le-Duc had relied
on the lithographic process, but visually, his entourages worked in a similar
fashion to woodcuts, with the juxtaposition of text and image, except that they
the gothic put to use 243
were inverted vignettes insofar as the text was inserted within the larger space
of the image. The borders of the Voyages pittoresques stand as an interesting
experiment in the unstable relation between text and image, particularly since
they do not relate to the text in any obvious way. They constitute a collection
of objects and horrific historical scenes; their excess disrupting rather than
supplementing the reading.
Baron Taylor’s lavish lithographic prints of ancient France are, of course,
as different from the figures of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
as they could possibly be. The massive folios of the Voyages pittoresques
provide an example of the sort of publication that Viollet-le-Duc was
precisely reacting against. In contrast to the Voyages pittoresques, the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture was to be an economical and handy
publication meant for a wide audience. Its investigation of the Gothic was
not to depend on a series of impressions, but upon the scientific auscultation
of a complex architectural artefact. As a matter of principle, Viollet-leDuc discarded picturesque views conveying ambiance. If he did resort
to bird’s-eye views, occasionally staging crowds of Lilliputian figures in
“historical” action, it was always to illustrate “use,” to show architecture
to be the product of very concrete functional demands. Significantly, his
few bird’s-eye perspectives animated with crowds of figures are almost
always illustrating military architecture and techniques.
Viollet-le-Duc’s visual strategy had its source in the tradition of
handbooks in the natural sciences, in which the insertion of didactic or
analytical vignettes had become a norm. England led the way, with the
widespread use and quality of such scientific vignettes.67 The field of
archaeology, so close to the natural sciences in the nineteenth century,
would quickly adopt this form of illustration. In France, the Instructions
sur l’architecture du comité historique des arts et monuments, produced by
Mérimée and Albert Lenoir beginning in 1839, among others, offers an
early example of the use of small woodcut vignettes.68 Their function
was simply taxonomic. They served as brief mementos of key elements
of architectural styles, although in a few instances, construction details
were objects of more analytical figures. Arcisse de Caumont’s immensely
popular Abécédaire, ou, rudiments d’archéologie (first edited in 1850)
expanded on the same strategy. An abridged version of de Caumont’s
massive Cours d’antiquités monumentales professé à Caen en 1830. Histoire
de l’art dans l’ouest de la France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’au
XVIIIe siècle (1833), the Abécédaire had its text interspersed with woodcut
illustrations. It presents the type of analytical figures drawn in perspective
that Viollet-le-Duc will employ a few years later. The woodcuts are rather
crude, but not without graphic power. The views of dilapidated ruins
often have an anatomical aspect that anticipates Viollet-le-Duc’s écorchés.
Alongside the more technical illustrations, de Caumont could not resist
juxtaposing picturesque views of church interiors, visual gestures intended
to recreate the ambiance of medieval churches. His view into the chapel of
7.5 View of the terminal chapel in Auxerre Cathedral with the free-standing
columns in front. Unsigned wood engraving. From Arcisse de Caumont,
Abécédaire ou rudiment d’archéologique, 1851. Courtesy McGill
University Library. Rare Books and Special Collections
the gothic put to use 245
the Virgin in the Cathedral of Saint-Étienne
at Auxerre is a particularly good example
(Fig. 7.5): the strong chiaroscuro effect and the
presence of the small praying figure recall
the sort of immersive representation that
Viollet-le-Duc had produced in the 1830s.
I single out this image (whose draftsman
and engraver are unidentified) because its
subject and point of view were lifted from
a woodcut published by Viollet-le-Duc in
Annales archéologiques a few years earlier
(Fig. 7.6). Viollet-le-Duc’s woodcut, engraved
by Claude-Nicolas-Eugène Guillaumot, set
new standards of precision and delicacy for
French archaeological woodcut illustrations.
Significantly, it was inserted as a separate plate
in the journal. The point of view is identical to
de Caumont’s, but no strong shadow disturbs
the purity of the line drawing. De Caumont’s
version might seem more captivating, yet
the intricate web of lines in Viollet-le-Duc’s
version has an absorbing power all its own.
With the small floor plan jutting into the space
of the three-dimensional representation, the
viewer is encouraged to move mentally in
and out of the image. De Caumont’s version
is, by comparison, more static. Despite the
differences, de Caumont’s Abécédaire, with
its hundreds of woodcuts inserted into the
text, remains the closest French precedent to the type of illustrations that
Viollet-le-Duc exploits so well in the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture.
A comparison with de Caumont’s relatively crude carvings shows how
much Viollet-le-Duc elevated the medium.
In fact, the model that inspired Viollet-le-Duc was not French, but
British: John Henry Parker’s Glossary of Terms used in Grecian, Roman, Italian
and Gothic Architecture. It was the most outstanding British illustrated
archaeological publication, in terms of the number and quality of woodcut
illustrations accompanying the text. We have already noted the influence of
Parker’s Glossary in the overall conception of Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture. The illustrations played the biggest role in
engendering that influence. Parker was scrupulous about the quality of his
illustrative vignettes, which demonstrate the full mastery of British wood
engravers, not only when compared with de Caumont’s Abécédaire, but also
the best of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture’s figures. All of Parker’s
woodcuts were carved by Orlando Jewitt, who also produced many of the
7.6 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Cathedral
at Auxerre, Chapel
of the Virgin.
Wood engraving
by E. Guillaumot.
Figs. 33–34 of “De
la construction
des monuments
religieux en
France,” Annales
archéologiques,
vol. 7, 1847.
Private collection
246 architecture and the historical imagination
7.7
C. Mackenzie.
Sedilia and Piscina,
Wymington,
Bedfordshire.
Wood engraving
by Orlando
Jewitt. From
John Henry
Parker, Glossary
of Terms used in
Grecian, Roman,
Italian and Gothic
Architecture, vol.
1, 5th edition,
1850. Courtesy
McGill University
Library. Rare
Books and Special
Collections
original drawings. Jewitt was an admirer of medieval architecture and
a committed supporter of its revival. As an engraver, he was nearly as
famous as Thomas Bewick for producing woodcuts of the finest and most
accurate line and richest shadows (Fig. 7.7).
The first edition of Parker’s Glossary, dating from 1836, contained
150 figures. But the re-editions, appearing at a rapid pace, greatly expanded
that number: 400 in the second edition of 1838, 700 in the third edition of
1840–1841, 1,100 in the fourth edition of 1845, and 1,700 in the fifth edition
of 1850. The fifth edition, comprising two volumes bound in three tomes,
marked the high point in terms of both number and quality of illustrations.
For this edition, Parker had sought the assistance of Robert Willis, an
engineer and mathematician famous for his structural studies of Gothic
churches and his stunning axonometric drawings of vault construction,
which would be such a determining influence on Auguste Choisy later in the
century. Willis provided drawings of his own for the fifth edition, among
which there is a striking specimen of the type of anatomical “peeling away”
that Viollet-le-Duc would use to great effect in the Dictionnaire raisonné
the gothic put to use 247
de l’architecture: the drawing of an impost
of Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire under the
heading “Masonry” (Fig. 7.8). Even the way it
occupies the page prefigures the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture’s illustrations: no
longer a thumbnail vignette typical of Parker’s
Glossary, it competes with the text, occupying
a large portion of the page’s surface. Just as
Viollet-le-Duc projected, Willis’s anatomical
image “arouses curiosity by demanding an
explanation.” The explanation provided by
Parker, however, is far from engaging the
readers’ imagination to the extent that the
figure does. Following the taxonomic logic
of Parker’s Glossary, it merely identifies the
various parts.
The demi-effet
Unquestionably, Parker’s Glossary set a standard
in terms of quality for Viollet-le-Duc, but not in
terms of character. None of his figures displays
the finesse and sensuous depth of shadow that
is so remarkable in Jewitt’s work. This should
not be attributed to the French engravers’ lack
of skills, as it reflects a deliberate strategy on the part of Viollet-le-Duc: in
electing to minimize contrasting shadows, he wanted to insure that the image
blended perfectly with the text. In many instances, his figures are pure line
drawings without shadows. When shadows are required, they have a light
and even tonality, which insures the dominance of the line work (Figs. 7.9
and 7.10).
To produce the many thousands of figures that dot the pages of his two
analytical dictionaries, Viollet-le-Duc always proceeded the same way: he
drew directly with pencil onto the woodblock on which a light coat of white
gouache was laid beforehand. He had devised a special drafting table that
allowed him to insert and fix woodblocks of varying sizes upon a larger
surface so that he could use the architect’s drafting instruments. In most cases,
he drew every single line, leaving little or no interpretative leeway for the
engraver. Claude Sauvageot—a well-known steel engraver, and a close friend
and collaborator of Viollet-le-Duc—described the process in detail:
[When drawing on wood blocks, Viollet-le-Duc] would sometimes resort to ink wash
to indicate shadows; but, in the majority of cases, he would shade his drawings using
pencil hatching, which he did with a very accurate feeling for form and a prodigious
sureness of touch. The engraver always had to follow these indications, when not
7.8 Robert
Willis. Impost,
Whitby Abbey,
Yorkshire. Wood
engraving by
Orlando Jewitt.
From John Henry
Parker, Glossary
of Terms used in
Grecian, Roman,
Italian and Gothic
Architecture, vol.
1, 5th edition,
1850. Courtesy
McGill University
Library. Rare
Books and Special
Collections
7.9 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Pillar base at Laon Cathedral. Wood engraving by A. Pégard.
Fig. 37 of “Base,” from Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 2, 1856. Private collection
7.10 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Detail of hanging keystone at arch intersection. Unsigned wood engraving.
Fig. 46 of “Voûte,” from Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 9, 1868. Private collection
the gothic put to use 249
simply asked to produce a servile facsimile. By proceeding in such fashion, in other
words by indicating the direction of the hatching at the same time as the exact value
of the tone, Viollet-le-Duc was preparing and simplifying the work of the engraver,
who, not having to worry about the form of the hatching, would carve the wood with
greater daring and precision.69
So, typically, the engravers working for Viollet-le-Duc would carve everything
out except for the lines drawn on the block. This faithful translation was
the chief reason why Viollet-le-Duc preferred wood engravings to all
other reproduction techniques, aside from the fact that they allowed the
blending of text and drawing70: his drawing was transferred from pencil
to wood, and then directly imprinted on the page in the printing press. He
disliked engravings that demanded weeks or months of carving or etching,
producing “overworked” images, which he labelled “the English genre.”71
He did everything in his power to minimize the engraver’s work, producing
drawings of utmost limpidity. Sauvageot gives a perceptive description of his
visual economy:
The drawings by Viollet-le-Duc destined to be engraved are almost always conceived
in a soft and golden chromatic scale, which gives them an air of indescribable
grandeur and impressive stillness, but to which, in most cases, a network of hatchings
more or less skillfully carved cannot do full justice. The strokes and the contours,
such an essential part of a drawing, were always drawn by him using diluted ink:
never a bold outline comes to disturb or compromise the general effect by attracting
too much attention. He generally avoids casting sharp and dryly outlined shadows
determined by the rules of mathematical projection. It is thanks to his long experience
and his constant observations that he succeeds in being accurate and in producing
a seductive impression from such tone-down effects [demi-effets]. … Indeed nothing
is more difficult than the restraint required not to put everything in a drawing and
knowing how to intelligently give up certain things.72
Even if Sauvageot stresses the quality of the original drawings versus their
engraved counterpart, his expressions “soft chromatic scale” and “impressive
stillness” capture well the spectral character of the figures in the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture: with their evenness of strength matching the grayscale
of the text, they indeed produce a demi-effet. Viollet-le-Duc thus inverted the
usual character of woodcuts, where blacks dominated, as in Parker’s Glossary.
His, in contrast, are pale and tread the surface delicately. Their subdued
quality neutralizes the potentially unsettling power of the illustrations:
instead of jutting out from the page, the figures are part of the matrix of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture.
Drawing as Restoration
Sauvageot and others have documented well how the figures of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture are sometimes unfaithful to the actual
state of the buildings they represent.73 Viollet-le-Duc had no qualms about
250 architecture and the historical imagination
7.11 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Manuscript
page for “De
la construction
des monuments
religieux en
France,” Annales
archéologogiques,
vol. 6, 1847.
Private collection
restoring a fragment to an assumed original
state or stripping it of “unnecessary” clutter
to effect his demonstration. It reflects
both his general conception of restoration
and the nature of the Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture as a work: in order for
architects to internalize the language of
medieval architecture, this architecture
must be restored to its original logic. The
drawings are not passive reproductions, but
part of an active operation. In that sense,
they differ from Parker’s vignettes: while
Parker collected his drawings from various
draftsmen who sought to “reproduce”
various medieval details, Viollet-le-Duc
drew all his illustrations himself, this activity
being simultaneous with and having the
same logical extension of his writing.
The manuscript version of “De la
construction
des
édifices
religieux”
published in Annales archéologiques offers a
good example of this simultaneity: the remarkable écorché of the Gothic
vault, the first overtly anatomical representation produced by Viollet-leDuc, appears in the middle of the page, drawn with the same ink as the
text, the writing finding its way around it (Fig. 7.11). The manuscript of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture—particularly its first volumes—shows
the same coincidence of drawing and text: thumbnail figures are drawn in
the margins of the text, delineating each figure’s outline (Fig. 7.12). Once
an article was completed, we may assume that Viollet-le-Duc drew up the
finished drawings directly on woodblocks. The later volumes indicate a
slight change in method: thumbnail figures still appear in the side margins,
but they are scribbles that no longer indicate the drawing’s final form. Either
Viollet-le-Duc completed the drawings before writing each article (and thus
saw no need to duplicate the image on the manuscript), or he felt he could
memorize the figures well enough to dispense with the need of reminder
sketches. In either case, the manuscript bears witness to how the writing and
the drawing were part of a single act. The demi-effet described by Sauvageot
registers that mental character. What is most fascinating, however, is that
their light tonality does not diminish the image’s palpability. Viollet-le-Duc
shuns abstraction, always maintaining “a very accurate feeling for form,” as
Sauvageot described. His woodcuts have a presence, but of an evanescent
sort.
The emblematic example, despite its uniqueness, is the celebrated
exploded perspective of the springing point of the arch of the nave in a typical
thirteenth-century church, a drawing published in 1859 in volume four of
7.12 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Manuscript of the first page of
the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 1, 1854. © Archives
départementales de l’Oise, 64 J 1. Cliché Stéphane Vermeiren
252 architecture and the historical imagination
7.13 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Exploded view
of the springing
point of the arch.
Wood engraving
by E. Guillaumot.
Fig. 48 of
“Construction,”
from Dictionnaire
raisonné de
l’architecture, vol.
4, 1859. Private
collection
the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture and
engraved by Guillaumot (Fig. 7.13).74 It takes up
a full page under the article on “Construction”
and provides a stunning example of what
Sauvageot describes as “impressive stillness.”
Both the view and the building are totally
imaginary, the fictive arch frozen as it is being
assembled. The drawing summarizes not only
Viollet-le-Duc’s whole conception of the Gothic
structure in equilibrium, but also his method
of drawing as a mental act of decomposition
and recomposition. Looking at this striking
image, we are made to participate in a process
of mental recreation, from disjointed members
to a never-to-be-seen totality.
We can better understand the nature of
Viollet-le-Duc’s graphic imagination by
considering the history of this drawing. Violletle-Duc was preoccupied with it for more than
a decade before it found its final form in 1859.
Already in “De la construction des édifices
religieux en France depuis le commencement
du christianisme jusqu’au XVIe siècle,” his
first account of Gothic construction published
in Annales archéologiques (1844–1847), he
spent considerable energy on the problem of
representing the springing point of the Gothic
cathedral’s great arches. I have presented
above its first three-dimensional depiction in its manuscript form. It is a most
noteworthy drawing, being the earliest cutaway perspective ever published
by Viollet-le-Duc. That form of écorché will be given great importance in the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture for its capacity to clarify relationships
among distinct, but adjacent members. It is thus significant that this drawing
is the first bearing the signature of its engraver, “E. Guillaumot” (see Fig.
5.3),75 who together with Amédée Pégard, would be the main engravers for
the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture. Perhaps even more significant, it is
also the drawing in which Viollet-le-Duc’s signature, in the odd form of a
medieval mason’s mark, achieves its mature form, after which there would be
countless variations.76
In the same 1847 installment of the article in Annales archéologiques,
probing closer to the springing point of the arch, Viollet-le-Duc provides a
series of detail elevations and three-dimensional cuts to expose the complex
imbrication of stones comprising the springing point of the Gothic vault
(Fig. 7.14). With the advantage of hindsight, we can easily imagine how these
dispersed drawings could be synthesized into the one exploded perspective of
the gothic put to use 253
a decade later. Yet what we have here is a kit of parts, as if we were seeing the
stones in the mason’s yard before being assembled: there is none of the vital
tension of the great drawing of 1859. In the first volume of the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, under the heading “Assise,” the representation of the
springing point of the rib-vault has evolved (Fig. 7.15). This time, Viollet-leDuc offers an exploded perspective that closely resembles the final drawing.
The adjustments that will be made later, however, are crucial. Apart from the
difference in size (the tiny image is less than five centimeters tall while the
famous drawing in volume four reaches 18 centimeters), the former still lacks
the vitality of the latter. In the drawing of 1853, Viollet-le-Duc separates only
one stone coursing, spreads these stones too far apart, and neglects to draw
the course immediately below. Above all, he does not cast shadows and omits
the geometrical matrix that gives such a strong visual structure to the final
version—the stones float aimlessly.
The comparison between the two drawings enables us better to identify the
final version’s particular power. Not only does it communicate a strong sense
of unity, allowing us to understand at a glance
the constructive system of Gothic rib vaulting,
but it does so with considerable dynamism.
The drawing gives us all at once a strong
feel for the intricacy and imbrication of the
stones and the inner vitality that runs through
them. The various stones of the ribs seem
deprived of weight, and the faint delineation
of the geometrical matrix reveals delicately
but efficiently the mental procedure that
generated its form. What we are witnessing
is not the process of setting heavy stones in
7.15 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Exploded view of the
springing point of the arch. Wood engraving by
A. L. Fig. 6 of “Appareil,” from Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture, vol. 1, 1854. Private collection
7.14 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Arch springers.
Wood engraving
by E. Guillaumot.
Figs. 29, 30 and
31 of “De la
construction
des édifices
religieux en
France,” Annales
archéologiques,
vol. 6, 1847.
Private collection
7.16 Nicolas-Henri Jacob. Exploded view of the human skull. Lithograph. Pl. 30 from
Jean-Marc Bourgery, Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, vol. 1, 1832. Reproduced
by permission of the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University
the gothic put to use 255
place, but the idea of the medieval vault emerging from the medieval mason’s
mind. We are seeing the conception, just like Viollet-le-Duc’s representation
of the “ideal cathedral” to be discussed later. Guillaumot used all his skills
to produce a woodcut that conveys an accurate feeling for form with an
uncanny evanescence. We can just imagine what the woodblock looked like
once Guillaumot had hollowed out the wood surface to leave only the finest
matrix of wooden threads that made up Viollet-le-Duc’s striking drawing.
Recounting the steps of the staged evolution, one could easily forget that
Viollet-le-Duc had a model for that type of representation in contemporary
scientific illustration. An anatomical drawing contained in the first volume
of Dr. Jean-Marc Bourgery’s Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme (1831)
shows an extraordinary exploded perspective of a human skull, unique in
the history of anatomical representations (Fig. 7.16). We will discuss later at
length the work of Bourgery, who was a close friend of Étienne Delécluze
and Viollet-le-Duc. For now I simply wish to consider that particular
lithograph, which had been noted and given the highest praise in the press
by Delécluze. Viollet-le-Duc was aware of it—not only did he read his uncle’s
enthusiastic description in the Journal des débats, but he had Bourgery’s
anatomical treatise in his library. In his 1834 review, Delécluze emphasized
that the most notable achievement of the Traité complet de l’anatomie was
its lithographs drawn by the painter Nicolas-Henri Jacob, who had been
a student of David, like Delécluze himself. More than any other treatise of
the nineteenth century, Bourgery’s Traité complet de l’anatomie studied the
capacity to represent precisely the intimate assembly of the human body
into a whole.77 According to Delécluze, the lithograph of the exploded
skull is the one illustration that best summarizes the entire work, clearly
demonstrating “each particular bone’s diverse mode of articulation with its
adjacent neighbors, and its relative position within the ensemble that makes
up the skull.”78 It is indeed a remarkable visual demonstration of the great
Georges Cuvier’s comparative anatomy, which paid scrupulous attention to
each organ’s correlation within the whole economy of living beings. But it
goes beyond Cuvier’s theory of fixism, the image conveying also the vitalism
of Goethe and Étienne-Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire. The cranium bones are
conceived as the product of a metamorphosis of an “ideal” vertebra: the
same double logic of imbrication and transformation that Viollet-le-Duc’s
famous exploded perspective reveals so effectively.
In his review, Delécluze does not so much stress the drawing’s illustration
of scientific principles as its capacity to merge scientific merit with artistic
purpose. Jacob’s lithographs not only provide accurate scientific information
on the human body, claimed Delécluze: they also propose an “artistic” view
of it. By “artistic” Delécluze does not refer to the beauty or quality of Jacob’s
draftsmanship; he points, rather, to the lithographs’ ability to make us “feel”
the body’s texture and volume. Scientists, claim Delécluze, are too happy to
embrace to an abstract idea of the body, “forgetting, for instance, the sense of
depth and the manifold directions taken by the parts.”79 As for artists, left to
256 architecture and the historical imagination
themselves, they are at risk of providing a representation devoid of the logic
of the body’s workings.
The idea was central to Delécluze’s more general conception that art has
a quasi-scientific link to reality. I write quasi-scientific because Delécluze’s
approach was visual, based entirely upon drawing. “The study and the
practice of art,” he writes, “lead to the scrupulous observation of nature, to
the search for its underlying laws, to the hidden cause of all phenomena,
to the search for truth, in short, to science and philosophy.”80 It is the Précis
d’un traité de peinture—a small book published by Delécluze when Viollet-leDuc was reaching his fourteenth birthday—that gives us the first clues about
Delécluze’s rational pedagogy. It rigorously sets the rule “of copying exactly
d’après nature all objects that one would wish to imitate.”81 Inspired by the
teaching of David, who (at least as reported by Delécluze) admonished his
students to look at nature with the innocence of a child,82 Delécluze advocates
a methodical exploration of the truth of nature as a “compass” to orient the
artist in his search for beauty. “Beauty is the goal, imitation is the means”83 is
Delécluze’s own succinct summary of the doctrine.
The art of perspective is the key agent of disclosure. It is an “elementary
science” thanks to which “the artist combines everything he sees and feels so
as to make perception swifter, stronger, and easier for other men.”84 There
is a sort of magic to drawing, born of “love which enlivens everything.” It
is only through such mysterious agency “that life emerges from chaos and
death,” and that “the pupil feels he has finally become an artist.”85 These last
sentences, which constitute an echo of our reading of Delécluze’s mentorship
as a traumatic experience of the double bind, speak of a palingenesic process
basic to the artist’s relation to the real: the artist must dismember the world
before he can proceed with its glorious resuscitation. As the true artist’s aim
“is to penetrate nature’s secret,”86 anatomy was a science of predilection.
Jacques-Nicolas Paillot de Montabert’s Traité complet de la peinture (1828), a
book that served as a guide for Jacob’s scientific illustrations in Bourgery’s
anatomical treatise, and which Delécluze greatly admired, had already well
argued that point.87
Bourgery and Jacob, working in tandem, can thus be seen as emblematic
of Delécluze’s desire to merge art and science. Jacob’s drawings were able to
synthesize both aspects successfully, combining a sense of abstraction with
a truly realistic image. Instead of representing, as is typical, each layer of the
body one by one, Bourgery arranged special dissections where the body was
cut transversally, “allowing Jacob to provide drawn sections which, though
representing something real, nonetheless bring to mind an abstract conviction
as would an orthogonal drawing.”88 By cutting into the depth of the body and
drawing out a new spatiality, similar to the one Viollet-le-Duc would extract
from the cathedral’s body, Jacob created images of a powerful palpability. In
a later article, published in the Journal de Paris in 1840, Delécluze summarized
his interpretation of Jacob’s lithographs: “One who studies [the Traité complet
de l’anatomie] is confronted and seized by two of his auxiliary organs, mind
the gothic put to use 257
and sight, whose functions when operating simultaneously,
render, as it were, truths palpable.”89
Bourgery’ and Jacob’s ideal of an exhaustive description is
not only technically more advanced and daring, it introduces
a new way of seeing, thanks to a new principle of deciphering
corporal space where mind and sight must work together.
The truths made “palpable” are the restored body as it lives in
the mind of the clinician. The drawing of the exploded skull is
therefore exemplary because it makes visible, with amazing
vividness, the process of decomposition and restoration
upon which the whole of the treatise is predicated. Prosper
Mérimée, trying to describe the novelty of the figures of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, used the same word as
Delécluze used when writing about Bourgery’s lithographs:
“Its plates, done with a rare talent,” wrote Mérimée, “render
the description, as it were, palpable. … It is as if reality had
been substituted for a convention.”90
Jacob’s lithograph of the exploded skull and Viollet-leDuc’s woodcut of the exploded springing point of the Gothic
arch are, to be sure, very different types of representation:
the former has a quasi-photographic quality and highcontrast blacks and whites, while the latter is subdued,
almost intangible, maintaining a certain level of abstraction.
Yet Delécluze’s remarks concerning Jacob’s drawing could
accurately describe Viollet-le-Duc’s exploded perspective of
the Gothic vault. We have followed the stages through which
Viollet-le-Duc slowly progressed toward a representation that
makes palpable each stone’s specificity and position within
the ensemble. What distinguished the last version, however,
was its capacity to communicate a mental act, stones falling
into place in the mind of the architect. Even more than Jacob’s
exploded skull, the drawing seamlessly merges the abstract with the corporeal:
we feel and are made to understand simultaneously. It is exactly what Violletle-Duc intended. Inserted under the heading “Construction” at the end of
a particularly long and abstract discussion on the complex geometry of the
springing point of the Gothic rib vault, he explains his drawing as follows: “To
make intelligible the operation just traced, even to persons not familiar with
descriptive geometry, we draw the three springing blocks of the preceding
figure, viewed one over the other in perspective with their moldings.”91
In other words, the drawing pulls readers out of a very laborious passage
of descriptive geometry by making them see “vividly” the logic of assembly.
Thanks to the exploded perspective, readers can project themselves into the
geometrical demonstration. There are many other exemplary drawings in
the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture or Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier
which explore such dynamics of seeing (Fig. 7.17). The didactic character of
7.17 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Views of left (A,
B) and right (C,
D) plate armor
spaulders, each
rotated to show
front and back.
Unsigned wood
engraving. Fig.
14 of “Spallière,”
Dictionnaire
raisonné du
mobilier, vol. 6,
1875. Private
collection
258 architecture and the historical imagination
Viollet-le-Duc’s figure thus reaches the level of an imaginative projection
of a bodily experience: the very palpability that Delécluze and Mérimée
invoked.
Notes
1
Roger Price, The French Second Empire. An Anatomy of Political Power (Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 47.
2
Madame Carette, Souvenirs intimes de la Cour des Tuileries, 3 vols. (Paris: Paul
Ollendorff, 1889–1891), vol. 3, 216.
3
Carette, Souvenirs intimes de la Cour des TuileriesSouvenirs intimes, vol. 3,
214–215.
4
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal. Mémoires de la vie littéraire, 3 vols. (Paris:
Robert Laffont, 1989), vol. 2, 612–613. The diary entry dated Monday, November
23, 1874, was not included in the 1888–1896 edition of the Journal.
5
See Jean Baptiste Massillon Rouvet’s Viollet-le-Duc et Alphand au siège de Paris
(Paris: Librairies imprimeries réunies, 1892), 24.
6
See “Le Cercle de l’union artistique,” in La paix, February 16, 1883, and Martha
Ward, “Impressionist Installations and Private Exhibitions,” The Art Bulletin 73,
no. 4 (December 1991): 599–622. Robert Belot and Daniel Bermond mention that
Bartholdi met Viollet-le-Duc at the Cercle de l’union artistique in Bartholdi (Paris:
Perrin, 2004), 127.
7
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Le journal des Goncourt. Mémoires de la vie
littéraire, 9 vols. (Paris: Bibliothèque Charpentier, 1888–1896), vol. 1 (1888), 133,
and vol. 3 (1888), 161 and 200.
8
See Bibliographie de la France, ou Journal général de l’imprimerie et de la librairie
25 (June 16, 1853): 410–411, where the first installment is announced. The
first volume of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture was completed only in
December 1854, the year that appears on the first edition. In September 1853,
Viollet-le-Duc’s uncle, Étienne Delécluze, reported that the Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture was published up to the heading “Archivolte” in the article on
“Arc”; see Journal des débats (September 13, 1853). Two months later, AdolpheNapoléon Didron reported that five installments of the Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture had been published; see AA 13 (December 1853): 328. In fact, ten
installments were already available in December 1853, so roughly up to the
first section of the article on “Architecture,” 160; see the Feuilleton de journal de la
librairie 50 (December 10, 1853): 695. It remains unclear when the preface was
published, but judging from its contents and from the fact that the two feuillets
making up the installment are labelled a and b instead of numerically like the
rest of the book, I would assume that it was written and published once the
volume was completed rather than at the beginning.
9
Duc Jean-Gilbert-Victor-Fialin de Persigny to Viollet-le-Duc, Paris, February 27,
1868, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1865–68,” doc. 671.
10
The Essai sur l’architecture militaire au moyen âge (Paris: B. Bance, 1854) is listed
on December 2, 1854, in the Bibliographie de la France. The first volume of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture is listed in December 30, 1854. The English
edition first appeared under the title Essay on the Military Architecture of the
the gothic put to use 259
Middle Ages, trans. Martin Macdermott (London: John Henry and James Parker,
1860) and subsequent editions under the title Military Architecture (London: John
Henry and James Parker, 1879).
11
Prince Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Études sur le passé et l’avenir de l’artillerie, 4
vols. (Paris: J. Dumaine, 1846–1863).
12
Viollet-le-Duc, Essai sur l’architecture militaire au moyen âge, 32, and passim.
13
It is interesting to compare the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture’s topicality
with Ruskin’s few remarks on the Crimean War at the end of vol. 3 (chap.
XVIII) of Modern Painters, written during the brutal winter of 1855 (and
published in 1856). First, Ruskin’s observations constitute an overt and direct
digression into current affairs. Second, though positive about the war, Ruskin
makes sure that his words won’t be misinterpreted as an endorsement of war
for war’s sake. Third, his purpose in praising the conflict is to celebrate the
union of “a good Queen and a great Emperor,” urging England and France
“to love one another” in the future; Modern Painters. 5 vols. (London: Smith,
Elder and Co., 1873), vol. 3, 333–339. In sharp contrast, Viollet-le-Duc’s Essai
sur l’architecture militaire au moyen âge makes reference to contemporary politics
in ways that are covert, opportunistic, and deeply embedded in militarist
convictions.
14
Viollet-le-Duc, Essai sur l’architecture militaire au moyen âge, 139.
15
“L’empereur Napoléon III représente un principe, celui de l’autorité, et son
gouvernement n’a jeté quelques racines dans le sol français que du jour où cette
autorité s’est manifestée par une puissante influence sur les affaires extérieures.
Le pays a fait le raisonnement simple ‘puisque notre gouvernement reprend
le premier plan vis à vis les autres gouvernements, il est fort, donc il faut lui
obéir et s’y dévouer’. Car ce pays-ci a besoin de se dévouer, il ne comprend pas
l’autorité de la loi, la force du droit public, il comprend seulement et admire la
puissance morale, la main de l’intelligence, en un mot. Chez nous, la volonté
d’un homme de génie aura toujours le dévouement public pour elle, même
contre la loi écrite,” Viollet-le-Duc, private reflections, October 31, 1858, MAP,
“Correspondance et rapports, 1855–59,” doc. 219.
16
In the preface to the second (1879) edition of the English translation of Essai sur
l’architecture militaire au moyen âge, the publisher, John Henry Parker, emphasized
the utility of the book for military schools: “How useful it would be for the
officers of the English army in Zulu-land,” Military Architecture, iii–vi.
17
On the Bance publishing house, see Béatrice Bouvier, L’édition d’architecture à
Paris au XIXe siècle. Les maisons Bance et Morel et la presse architecturale (Geneva:
Droz, 2004).
18
Bouvier, L’édition d’architecture à Paris au XIXe siècle, 31.
19
Held in the Conservation Collection, Getty Research Institute, Accession no.
850892.
20
Bouvier, L’édition d’architecture à Paris au XIXe siècle, 32, n. 70.
21
Bouvier, L’édition d’architecture à Paris au XIXe siècle, 41.
22
Complete sets of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture purchased in
the 1870s rarely comprised volumes published in consecutive years. (For
example, someone purchasing a new copy of the Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture in 1868, would get the first six volumes dated 1867–1868, but
volume seven would be dated 1864, volume eight would be dated 1866, and
260 architecture and the historical imagination
volumes nine and ten, 1868). A whole set was republished in a single year by
A. Morel et Cie. in 1875, including a special limited edition. In the 1880s, after
Viollet-le-Duc’s death, the Librairie des imprimeries réunies, which had absorbed
the Librairie centrale d’architecture, published another new edition, the last
produced in the nineteenth century. But various offset reprints of the original
edition of 1854–1868 were produced all through the twentieth century: in
1923 by Gründ; in 1967, by F. de Nobele; and in 1997 by Bibliothèque de
l’Image. Finally, in 1978, a recasting of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
by Georges Bernage for a popular audience was published under the title
Encyclopédie médiévale by Heimdal and then Inter-livres, a publication which
was reissued several times and could be found on remainder tables in Paris
and elsewhere.
23
“J’écris pour tout le monde, ç’a toujours été le but auquel je visais,” Viollet-leDuc, “Préface,” Le massif du Mont Blanc, étude sur sa constitution géodésique et
géologique, sur ses transformations et sur l’état ancien et moderne de ses glaciers (Paris:
J. Baudry, 1876), xvi.
24
In a letter dated September 18, 1857, the architect Théodore Oudet, founder and
conservateur of the museum at Bar-le-Duc, reminds Viollet-le-Duc that he had
suggested to him in 1853 that he double the number of entries in his Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture. Oudet finds that many terms are lacking. Yet he writes
that the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture “n’en restera pas moins un des
premiers ouvrages de ce siècle,” MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1855–59,”
doc. 191.
25
Fonds Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Archives départementales de l’Oise, 64
J 1-1.
26
Adolphe Lance, “Un nouveau dictionnaire d’architecture,” Encyclopédie
d’architecture 3 (May 1853): col. 61.
27
“Nous avons désiré que la plupart de ceux qui se destinent à l’Architecture
s’attachent plus particulièrement à l’étymologie de chacun des termes de l’art,
afin que par cette connaissance ils parviennent à se tromper moins sur le choix &
la véritable application des membres dont ils décorent leurs façades,” JacquesFrançois Blondel, Cours d’architecture, 9 vols. (Paris: Desaint Libraire, 1771–1777),
vol. 2, ix-x.
28
Charles Lenormant, “Variétés. L. David, son temps et son école par M. Delécluze;
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, par M. Viollet-le-Duc,” Le Correspondant 35
(1855): 768 and 771.
29
Viollet-le-Duc to Charles Lenormant, March 31, 1855, MAP, “Correspondance et
rapports, 1855–59,” doc. 10.
30
In a letter to an unidentified correspondent dated February 9, 1864, Viollet-leDuc confirmed that Beulé was the critic targeted in his preface to the Entretiens,
MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1863–64,” doc. 133.
31
“En présence d’une époque où les éléments de l’architecture sont défigurés et ses
règles confondues, le fil échappe à ceux qu’entraîne l’enthousiasme: ils reculent
effrayés, ainsi qu’ils l’avouent dans leurs préfaces, et adoptent, au lieu de la
forme historique, la forme du dictionnaire, qui est tout simplement le hasard par
ordre alphabétique,” Charles-Ernest Beulé, “L’enseignement de l’architecture,”
Causeries sur l’art (Paris: Didier, 1867), 57.
Beulé’s lecture was published as “[Mouvement de l’art en France] Cours
d’archéologie de M. Beulé à la Bibliothèque impériale,” Revue générale
the gothic put to use 261
d’architecture et des travaux publics, hereafter RGATP, 14 (1856): cols. 371–380.
Nearly the same sentence is published in Beulé’s “D’une architecture nationale
et religieuse,” Revue des Cours publics (January 25, 1857) 3–7. See in Chapter 9 of
this volume a further elaboration of the charged context in which Beulé’s lecture
transpired.
32
“Un ouvrage composé d’articles sans enchaînement logique les uns avec les
autres peut difficilement éviter un certain désordre, et l’on doit appréhender
que le caractère général de l’art du moyen âge ne soit apprécié au milieu de
la confusion d’informations techniques,” Prosper Mérimée, “Bibliographie.
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle,” Le Moniteur
universel, Saturday, December 30, 1854.
33
“Tous les plans ont leurs inconvénients comme leurs avantages,” Mérimée,
“Bibliographie. Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe
siècle.”
34
Louis Mongin, “Variétés scientifiques et littéraires. Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture … par M. Viollet-le-Duc, 3 vols. parus,” Le Nord, May 10, 1858. The
clipping was found in Viollet-le-Duc’s private papers, with no precise indication
of the newspaper apart from the brief title Le Nord. Could it be the Brussels
newspaper?
35
“Nous n’osons nous flatter de voir jamais classer le Dictionnaire d’architecture
parmi ces livres qu’on ouvre pour en extraire un renseignement et dont on
ne peut plus se séparer; comme ces rares amis auxquels on veut dire un mot
à la hâte, et qui nous tiennent pendant des heures sous le charme de leur
conversation,” Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture français du XIe
au XVIe siècle, hereafter DRA, 10 vols. (Paris: B. Bance and A. Morel, 1854–1868),
vol. 10, unpaged.
36
Tim Hilton, John Ruskin, The Early Years (New Haven; Yale University Press,
2000), 202.
37
Hubert Damisch, “Introduction” in Viollet-le-Duc, L’architecture raisonnée, extraits
du Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, selected and ed. Hubert Damisch
(Paris: Hermann, 1964), 9–26.
38
Michel Foucault, “Fantasia of the Library,” Language, Counter-memory, Practice.
Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 91.
39
“Par bonheur, j’avais été pris très-jeune de lexicomanie, et je vis que ma réponse
me gagnait de l’estime,” Charles Baudelaire, “Théophile Gautier,” Curiosités
esthétiques; l’art romantique et autres œuvres critiques (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1962),
665.
40
“Que l’écrivain qui ne savait pas tout dire, celui qu’une idée si étrange, si subtile
qu’on la supposât, si imprévue, tombant comme une pierre de la lune, prenait
au dépourvu et sans matériel pour lui donner corps, n’était pas un écrivain,”
Baudelaire, “Théophile Gautier,” 665.
41
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert, “Preface,” Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le
Rond d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des
métiers, 17 vols. (Paris: Briasson, 1751–65), vol. 1, xxxiv.
42
“Se mettre à la besogne pour résoudre des difficultés. C’est dans cet ordre
d’idées que j’ai toujours aimé écrire. Le genre purement descriptif me laisse
froid,” Viollet-le-Duc to Pierre-Jules Hetzel, July 17, 1874, LIV, 147.
43
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, XVI.
262 architecture and the historical imagination
44
Philippe Burty, “Histoire d’un hotel de ville et d’une cathédrale,” La République
française, December 1878.
45
Barry Bergdoll, “Une langue macaronique: Viollet-le-Duc’s Linguistic Metaphor,”
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Internationales Kolloquium, Stiftung Bibliothek Werner
Oechslin, Einsiedeln (Zurich: GTA Verlag and Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2010),
170–187.
46
“Pourquoi chercher à composer une langue macaronique, quand on a sous la
main un beau et simple langage?” Viollet-le-Duc, “Rapport fait à la Commission
des Arts et Édifices religieux,” March 1853, ANF, F-19-7741, 1; quoted in
Bergdoll, “Une langue macaronique,” 4.
47
There is no need to establish whether Viollet-le-Duc was knowledgeable about
Humboldt’s theory, since some version of the latter’s “vitalist” conception
of language circulated in linguistic circles of the mid-nineteenth century.
Humboldt’s own thought was deeply indebted to earlier reflections of French
writers including Denis Diderot, the ideologue Dominique-Joseph Garat, and
Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy, a body of work with which Viollet-le-Duc père
would have been familiar and which he would have shared with his son. The
majority of works by linguists or historians of language that we know Viollet-leDuc consulted, the books of Gustave Fallot, the Baron Albin d’Abel de Chevallet,
and Émile Littré, not to mention his conversations with amateurs such as
Mérimée and Comte Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau, would have confirmed that
there existed an intimate union between a nation’s thinking and the creative
force and energy of its language. It is through “research on language,” writes the
Baron Albin d’Abel de Chevallet (quoting Hippolyte Fortoul), “that the secret of
the diversity of nations” will be found. Fallot, for his part, proposed nothing less
than a sort of physiology of the French language; see Gustave Fallot, Recherches
sur les formes grammaticales de la langue française (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1839);
Baron Albin d’Abel de Chevallet, Origine et formation de la langue française (Paris:
Imprimerie impériale, 1853); Émile Littré, Histoire de la langue française (Paris:
Didier et Cie., 1863). This latter book is a collection of essays published earlier
in various journals. Viollet-le-Duc’s first contact with Gobineau (a great admirer
of Humboldt’s linguistic theories) could not have occurred much before the
early 1860s, but he would have known Gobineau’s Essai sur l’inégalité des races
humaines (Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot, 1853–1855) earlier through Mérimée.
Languages and their origin are important elements of Gobineau’s Essai.
48
Hans Aarsleff, “Introduction,” Wilhelm von Humboldt, On Language. The
Diversity of Human Language Construction and its Influence on the Mental
Development of the Human Species (1836–1840), trans. Peter Heath (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), xix. First published separately as Über die
Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige
Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts (Bonn: F. Dümmler, 1836–1840).
49
Humboldt, On Language, 158 and 183.
50
Charles Blanc, “Viollet-le-Duc,” Le Temps, November 2, 1879.
51
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, XII.
52
“Un moyen de produire, bien plus qu’une production,” Viollet-le-Duc, “À
Monsieur Adolphe Lance—20 décembre 1855,” Entretiens sur l’architecture, 2
vols. (Paris: A. Morel, 1863–1872), vol. 6 (1856), col. 8.
53
Charles Eastlake, A History of the Gothic Revival (London: Longmans, Green and
Co., 1972), 319.
the gothic put to use 263
54
“Il faut que l’image dans le livre illustré, invite à lire le texte, qu’elle excite la
curiosité en exigeant une explication. Autrement on regarde les images, on ne lit
pas le texte,” Viollet-le-Duc to Pierre-Jules Hetzel, July 17, 1874, LIV, 147.
55
Eastlake, A History of the Gothic Revival, 318.
56
Stephen Bann’s main work on the phenomenon of curiosity is Under the
Sign: John Bargrave as Collector, Traveler, and Witness (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1994). For the nineteenth century and the contemporary
context, see his “Curiouser and Curiouser,” Ways around Modernism (New York
and London: Routledge, 2007), pt. 2, 103–172. Bann refers to John House’s
“Curiosité” in Impressions of French Modernity: Art and Literature in France
1850–1900, ed. Richard Hobbs (Manchester, UK: University of Manchester Press,
1998), as well as the classic study on curiosity in the early modern period by
Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities, Paris and Venice, 1500–1800 (Oxford:
Polity Press, 1990).
57
Bann, Ways around Modernism, 138.
58
Bann, Ways around Modernism, 136 and 145.
59
Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, Dictionnaire historique
d’architecture, 3 vols. (Paris: Librairie d’Adrien Le Clere, 1832), vol. 2, 682.
60
“Une critique microscopique qui s’est occupée avec un amour curieux des
infiniment petits, des bijoux, des faïences, des objets usuels, … de ce qu’en
langage vulgaire on caractérise par ce vieux mot français ressuscité, le bibelot,”
Viollet-le-Duc, “L’enseignement des arts, Il y a quelque chose à faire,” Gazette des
Beaux-Arts 12 (May 1862): 395.
61
See Viollet-le-Duc, Exposé des faits relatifs à la transaction passée entre le
Gouvernement français et l’ancienne Liste civile. Musée des armes et musée chinois
(Paris: J. Hetzel, 1873), 8–11.
62
I paraphrase a definition given by Pomian in Collectors and Curiosities, Paris and
Venice, 1500–1800, 12 and 22; quoted in Bann, Ways of Modernism, 137, n. 31.
63
Viollet-le-Duc to Eugène Hucher, January 27, 1870, MAP, “Correspondance,
rapports et journal du siege, 1869–71,” doc. 183.
64
Historically, woodblock prints had had two major drawbacks: they could not
compete with steel engravings in terms of detail and finesse, and they could
not sustain a large number of pressings without suffering substantial wear.
These weaknesses were never completely overcome, but a new technique was
popularized in the eighteenth century which greatly lessened their importance:
using hardwoods (usually boxwood) cut against the grain, and thus carving
the surface perpendicular to the direction of the wood fibres, engravers could
use precision tools normally associated with metal engraving, such as the burin.
With its more resilient surface, the gravure sur bois debout, as it was called in
France, could sustain thousands of impressions without wear. That resistance
would be increased a thousandfold by the creation of polytypes, metal molds of
original woodblocks that permit reproduction for the mass market, especially
for illustrated journals running over 100,000 copies.
65
Charles Nodier’s L’histoire du roi de bohème et de ses sept châteaux (Paris: Delangle
Frères, 1830) is a striking example of a playful collage of typography and
images sometimes compared with Guillaume Appolinaire’s calligrammes. Few
of the great works of Romantic literature could resist the appeal of vignettes,
or of even more elaborate program of illustrations. The 1844 Perrotin-Garnier
264 architecture and the historical imagination
Frères edition of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris is justifiably famous:
more than 110 woodcut vignettes and 55 woodcut plates drawn by major
artists accompanied the readers through the adventures of Claude Frollo
and Esmeralda. The importance of these images in altering the perception of
the work can hardly be overestimated. As Philip James wrote in English Book
Illustration 1800–1900 (London, New York: Penguin Books, 1947), the advent of
illustrated books initiated “a partnership between author and artist to which
the artist contributes something which is a pictorial comment on the author’s
words or an interpretation of his meaning in another medium.” Such an idea
of partnership, however, should not obscure the fact that, especially in its
pioneering phase, the intrusion of images into the text generated a sense of
rupture rather than harmony. Art historians Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner
described the vignette as an eruption within literary space: “A vignette is not a
window because it has no frame. The image defined from its centre, rather than
its edges, emerges from the paper as an apparition or a fantasy,” “The Romantic
Vignette and Thomas Bewick,” Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of
Nineteenth-Century Art (New York: Viking Press, 1994), 84.
66
Barry Bergdoll, Léon Vaudoyer. Historicism in the Age of Industry (Cambridge,
Mass.: The MIT Press, 1994), 116–117.
67
Thomas Bewick’s exquisite woodcuts for the History of British Birds (Newcastle:
Beilby & Bewick, 1797–1804) is justifiably famous. But closer to the type of
analytical figures Viollet-le-Duc employed in the Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture are those illustrating anatomical handbooks such as Sir William
James Erasmus Wilson’s The Anatomist’s Vade mecum. A System of Human
Anatomy (London: Churchill, 1840), whose hundreds of woodcuts inserted into
the text, in the author’s own words, have a great “delicacy and force of effect,”
vii. The drawings were by an artist known as Bagg, but the engraver remains
unidentified. In France, one of the first medical treatises to use woodcuts
illustrations was the second edition of Alfred-Armand-Louis-Marie Velpeau’s
Nouveaux éléments de médecine opératoire: accompagnés d’un atlas … représentant
les principaux procédés operatoires et un grand nombre d’instruments de chirurgie, 3
vols. (Paris: J. B. Baillière, 1839). Velpeau mentioned in his preface that the trend
for that type of illustration came from England and America. His woodcuts are
considerably cruder than Wilson’s finely chiseled illustrations.
68
The precise publication date of the Instructions remains to be established
with certainty. The whole work was republished in Daly’s Revue générale de
l’architecture et des travaux publics in 1844, with additional woodcuts. Another
early example of an architectural work illustrated with woodcuts is Adolphe
Berty’s Dictionnaire de l’architecture du moyen âge (Paris: Derache, 1845).
69
Claude Sauvageot, Viollet-le-Duc et son oeuvre dessiné (Paris: A. Morel et Cie.,
1880), 136.
70
“The wood engraver’s tool always respected, despite itself, at least some
measure of the touches and contours [of the original drawing] so that the
appearance of the woodcut was not altered so much; … it is not the case with
engraving on metal, where, proceeding through the multiple operations of
the transferring of the drawing [calques, décalques], the tracing of the definitive
outline with the metal point, the etching and re-etching [morsures, remorsures],
final adjustments with the burin, the work of the burnisher, etc., one had infinite
occasions to denature the contours and the relief,” Sauvageot, Viollet-le-Duc et
son oeuvre dessiné, 144.
71
Sauvageot, Viollet-le-Duc et son oeuvre dessiné, 144.
the gothic put to use 265
72
Sauvageot, Viollet-le-Duc et son oeuvre dessiné, 144.
73
Sauvageot is the first to have documented these modifications. His observations
have been taken up by Françoise Boudon, “Le réel et l’imaginaire: Les figures
du Dictionnaire de l’architecture,” Revue de l’Art 58–59 (1983): 95–114, and Laurent
Baridon, L’imaginaire scientifique de Viollet-le-Duc (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996),
125–136.
74
It is difficult to know whether the engraver was Claude-Nicolas-Eugène
Guillaumot or his younger brother Louis-Étienne Guillaumot. Since the latter
usually signed “Guillaumot le jeune,” we may assume that Claude-NicolasEugène engraved the famous drawing.
75
Since the engraving was published in the mid-1840s, we can safely assume that
the engraver is Claude-Nicolas-Eugène Guillaumot. His brother Louis-Étienne
was then too young to be working as a professional engraver.
76
In fact, fig. 11 also displays the same signature; but figs. 11 and 20 were part of
the ensemble illustrating the springing point of the Gothic vault. They appear
a few pages apart in “De la construction des édifices religieux en France depuis
le commencement du christianisme jusqu’au XVIe siècle,” AA 6 (1847): 195 and
200. On Viollet-le-Duc’s signature, see Jean-Michel Leniaud, “Le monogramme
de Viollet-le-Duc,” in Architecture et discours, ed. Marie-Madeleine Castellani et
Joëlle Prungnaud (Lille: Collection UL3, 2006), 69–84.
77
Jean-Marc Bourgery, Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme comprenant la médecine
opératoire, 8 vols. (Paris: C.-A. Delaunay, 1832–1854). See Louis Tisseron and de
Quincy, “Notice sur le docteur Bourgery,” Archives des hommes du jour (Paris:
Maulde et Renou, 1846), 1.
78
Étienne Delécluze, “Variétés. Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, comprenant la
médicine opératoire, par M. le D. Bourgery, avec planches lithographiées d’après nature
par N. H. Jacob,” Journal des débats (November 15, 1834).
79
Delécluze, “Variétés. Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme.”
80
Étienne Delécluze, Léonard de Vinci, 1452–1519 (Paris: Schneider et Langrand,
1841); quoted in Robert Baschet, E. J. Delécluze, témoin de son temps, 1781–1863
(Paris: Boivin et Cie, 1942), 254.
81
Étienne Delécluze, Précis d’un traité de peinture (Paris: Au Bureau de
l’Encyclopédie portative, 1828), 176; quoted in Baschet, E. J. Delécluze, témoin de
son temps, 1781–1863, 249–250.
82
Delécluze, Louis David, son école et son temps (Paris: Didier, 1855); I consulted
a later edition (Paris: Macula, 1983), 57; quoted in Baschet in E. J. Delécluze,
témoin de son temps, 1781–1863, 24; this passage has also been cited by Baridon,
L’imaginaire scientifique de Viollet-le-Duc, 132.
83
Étienne Delécluze, “Traité complet de la peinture par Paillot de Montabert,” Le
journal des débats (January 13, 1830).
84
Delécluze, Précis d’un traité de peinture, 5.
85
Delécluze, Précis d’un traité de peinture, 149.
86
Delécluze, Précis d’un traité de peinture, 5.
87
Jacques-Nicolas Paillot de Montabert, Traité complet de la peinture (Paris:
Bossange père, 1828). Bourgery refers directly to Paillot de Montabert’s work in
the Traité complet. See also Reinhard Hildebrand, “Anatomie und Revolution des
266 architecture and the historical imagination
Menschenbildes,” Sudhoffs Archiv 76 (1992): 4–6. According to Delécluze, Paillot
de Montabert was the theoretician who codified into something reasonable and
coherent the secret doctrine of David’s studio. See Delécluze, Louis David, son
école et son temps, 97. For a more extended discussion of Paillot de Montabert’s
treatise, see my “Viollet-le-Duc’s Optic,” Architecture and the Sciences: Exchanging
Metaphors, Antoine Picon and Alessandra Ponte, eds. (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2002), 118–139.
88
Delécluze, “Variétés. Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme.”
89
Étienne Delécluze, “Des travaux anatomiques de M. le docteur Bourgery,” Revue
de Paris 17 (1840): 210.
90
Prosper Mérimée, “Bibliographie. Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française
du XIe au XVIe siècle, par M. Viollet-le-Duc,” Le Moniteur universel, Saturday,
December 30, 1854.
91
“Pour faire comprendre, même aux personnes qui ne sont pas familières avec la
géométrie descriptive, l’opération que nous venons de tracer, nous supposons
les trois sommiers de la figure précédente vus les uns au-dessus des autres en
perspective et moulurés,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 4, 92.
8
Physiology of the Ancient Architecture of France
Architecture versus Construction
If we now turn to the content of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, rather
than its form, one aspect extends the dynamic tension discussed in the previous
chapter: the splitting of its subject in two main headings: “Architecture” and
“Construction.” The two longest articles, each numbering around 300 pages,
form a rather unique feature of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture. In
his Encyclopédie méthodique of 1820, Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de
Quincy had devoted only a few pages to his article on “Construction,” a
simple reminder that architects ought to be knowledgeable about building.
It was articles like “Caractère” or “Coupole” that were most crucial to him.
For Viollet-le-Duc, construction was the most essential. But then why discuss
construction separately from architecture? What distinguished the two?
In his introduction to Viollet-le-Duc. L’architecture raisonnée, extraits du
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture published in 1964, Hubert Damisch pointed
to the gap between architecture and construction as the very emblem of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture’s structural logic: because of that interval,
claims Damisch, Viollet-le-Duc’s notion of “truth” in architecture could not be
tied to its construction or to its external form, but rested “in the space between
them, that which makes them complementary.”1 In other words, the gap
between architecture and construction prevents the Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture from falling into a deterministic or causal paradigm; it becomes,
instead, a free and open system. To make his point, Damisch emphasized the
ambiguity of Viollet-le-Duc’s famous phrase in the opening paragraph of the
article on “Construction”: “La construction est le moyen; l’architecture le résultat.”
If architecture is merely the “outcome” of construction and construction itself
only a means, cleverly asks Damisch, what constitutes the determinant? If
Viollet-le-Duc had instead written, “construction is the means, architecture
the goal,” the ambiguity would have been lifted. As it is, he juxtaposed two
“shifters,” to use a term from linguistics, which refer to one another.
If we put aside this phrase and consider the content of the two main
articles of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, the ambiguity underscored
268 architecture and the historical imagination
8.1 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. France
at the end of the
tenth century.
Unsigned wood
engraving. Fig. 1
of “Architecture,”
from Dictionnaire
raisonné de
l’architecture, vol.
1, 1854. Private
collection
by Damisch remains. One would naturally
assume (as many have) that architecture and
construction are joined in a simple means–
end relationship: construction is the means to
achieve a given program. This is the pattern
of Léonce Reynaud’s two-volume Traité
d’architecture contenant des notions générales
sur les principes de construction et l’histoire de
l’art, product of his lecture course at the École
polytechnique. The first volume comprises a
sort of inventory and analysis of construction
techniques, while the second presents an
extensive description of requirements for the
various modern building types, from religious
buildings to the more mundane programs.
But the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture’s
twin headings do not follow the same pattern.
For one thing, both “Architecture” and
“Construction” address the different building
types: religious, monastic, civil, and military.
Moreover, in neither article do we find a
discussion of “functional” requirements in the traditional sense. Viollet-leDuc is surprisingly uninterested in program. Despite the hundreds of pages
devoted to religious buildings in these two long articles, he never lays out the
complex liturgical requirements of a Catholic church in the Middle Ages. To
make matters even more confusing, construction issues and procedures are
discussed under both headings.
The distinction between architecture and construction is easily grasped
by the first figure appearing under each of the two headings. Under
“Architecture,” the first image is a small engraving of a historical map of
France in the year 1100 showing its various political regions (Fig. 8.1). Under
“Construction,” the first image illustrates the Roman construction method of
rubble infill faced with brick, a method still common, according to Violletle-Duc, in the Carolingian period (Fig. 8.2). From these two images, we see
that “Architecture” belongs to the larger cultural and political milieu, whereas
“Construction” deals with building traditions in a narrower sense. Under
the heading “Construction,” Viollet-le-Duc documents the transmission and
transformation of building methods, while under “Architecture,” he provides
a description of the evolving social context in which these transformations
took place.
In an article published in 1996,2 I argued that the split between construction
and architecture could have been associated with the two principles that
guided Georges Cuvier’s comparative anatomy: the principle of correlation
among parts, the necessary relation between the form of an animal’s organs
and their connection to other organs, and the principle of conditions of existence,
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 269
the fact that all organs serve a common purpose, which is the existence
of the animal in its environment. According to this model, construction
would address the correlation of the various elements of the building while
architecture would be concerned with the building’s symbiotic relationship
to its milieu. I still believe the model fits, but perhaps more loosely than I
originally thought.
The influence of the natural sciences on Viollet-le-Duc has been widely
discussed.3 Within his own lifetime, images drawn from comparative
anatomy were frequently used to describe his work.4 He himself occasionally
used Cuvier’s deductive science to draw analogies. However, such references
were so commonplace during the period that their significance is easily
overestimated: in the nineteenth century, Cuvier’s comparative anatomy was
to some extent the equivalent of Einstein’s theory of relativity in the twentieth.
Archaeologists as radically different as Viollet-le-Duc and Charles-Ernest
Beulé could both use the analogy without raising an eyebrow.5 Countless other
examples could be given, especially in archaeological writings. So, in order to
avoid overt generalizations, it is important to clearly identify the stages of
Viollet-le-Duc’s conception of the “organic” and its function in his intellectual
development. The organic metaphor was important in Neo-Catholic circles,
especially in the writings of Philippe Buchez or Hugues-Felicité-Robert de
Lamennais. Though precise evidence is hard to pin down, it was probably the
first channel by which the notion of the “anatomy” of the Gothic cathedral
insinuated itself into Viollet-le-Duc’s thinking. Throughout the writing of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, the organic analogy gains importance,
until, by the early 1860s, his interest in ethnology, heredity of instinct, and
racial characteristics takes over. In the 1850s, however, it is the importance of
the milieu, of historical conditions, that dominate. We have already traced that
shift when reviewing his 1852 article in Daly’s Revue générale de l’architecture et
8.2 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Carolingian
masonry wall
construction.
Unsigned wood
engraving.
Fig. 1 of
“Construction,”
from Dictionnaire
raisonné de
l’architecture, vol.
4, 1859. Private
collection
270 architecture and the historical imagination
des travaux publics, pinpointing the determining influence of François Guizot
and Augustin Thierry. As Viollet-le-Duc set to work on the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, however, a more organized relation to the natural
sciences seems to have been in his mind. A striking and rather solemn passage
from the preface is a clear sign of that new deliberateness:
We believe that the moment has arrived to study the art of the Middle Ages like one
studies the development and the life of a living being [la vie d’un être animé], who from
childhood reaches old age through continuous and imperceptible transformations,
without it being possible to identify the day when childhood ceases and old age
begins.6
In my 1997 genealogy of the organic metaphor in architectural circles in the
early nineteenth century, I followed in some detail the traces of the vitalist
metaphor in archaeological writings by figures such as Ludovic Vitet, Louis
Bâtissier, and Daniel Ramée, among others—all related, in various ways, to the
Commission des monuments historiques.7 The appeal of the organic metaphor
was part of a much larger European phenomenon which saw the emergence
of a sociological aesthetic whose main proponents in France were men like
Théodore Jouffroy, Victor Cousin, Pierre-Simon Ballanche, and Auguste
Comte, under the rampant influence of Saint-Simonianism. Archaeology, and
especially national archaeology, had assimilated (and participated in defining)
the new attitude whereby social and artistic phenomena, when understood in
their historical development, were treated as biologists treated living beings.
In my 1997 genealogy, I had neglected a significant figure: Dr. EugèneJoseph Woillez. His work, totally forgotten today, is useful to bring up
because he was the first archaeologist to try to establish a precise method
based upon the life sciences—a strategy that can shed light on the split
between architecture and construction in Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture. Woillez, a prominent medical doctor elected to the Académie
de médecine in 1872, had received his medical training in the 1830s under
French physician Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis, well known in the annals of
the discipline for having introduced something like statistical analysis in the
natural sciences. For some unknown reason (though the influence of Buchez
is highly probable), Woillez decided to take time off in mid-career to devote
himself to medieval archaeology, to try and bring to that discipline the same
scientific principles of “rigorous observation” that Dr. Louis had introduced
in medicine.8 Woillez’s Archéologie des monuments religieux de l’ancien Beauvoisis
pendant la métamorphose romane, published in installments between 1839 and
1849, is the most notable product of this research. Viollet-le-Duc was well aware
of Woillez’s work: he owned his book and quoted Woillez on iconography in
the pages of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture.9 Woillez, for his part,
celebrated the work of Viollet-le-Duc in an article on the origin of the pointed
arch published in the Mémoires de la société des antiquaires de Picardie in 1848.10
Woillez’s extended reflections on the nature of the evolution of architectural
forms during the Romanesque period are most relevant. Woillez conceives
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 271
this evolution as a continuous transformation, a “metamorphosis,” as he
calls it. Using the same analogy with living beings that Viollet-le-Duc used
in the preface of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, he compares the
early Romanesque period to the “egg of a living being,” the moment of the
“incubation of our religious architecture in the Middle Ages.” The second
period he calls the “moment of birth,” while he describes the architecture
of the second half of the twelfth century as the stage of “infancy.” “Perfect
virility” is achieved under Saint-Louis in the thirteenth century.11 Critical of
the division into distinct stylistic periods initiated by Arcisse de Caumont
earlier in the century, he pictures the course of architecture during the eleventh
and twelfth centuries as “nothing but transitional points that one must seize
as if in passing.”12 It is a “vie monumentale,”13 a “ceaseless and continuous
transformation.”14 For Woillez the analogy with living beings is a profound
one, in direct correspondence with a “société en travail”: a “living people”
slowly growing into a nation. In his final systematic tableau, he extended
his idea to the entire Middle Ages by distinguishing three distinct periods:
first, “the Romanesque metamorphosis (the incubation, birth, and childhood
of religious art)”; second, “the mystical metamorphosis (progress, virility of
religious art)”; and third, the “technitique” metamorphosis (decadence and
end of religious art).”15
Woillez’s use of the vitalist metaphor is by no means unique in the annals
of Romantic archaeology. Yet no one before him had raised the issue of a
method for applying such an “organic” conception of the development of
architectural forms. A binary division of his topic was the keystone to his
system:
It is urgent that ancient monuments … be studied synthetically under two aspects
kept clearly apart. First, we can consider buildings [to be] inert bodies that we study
in terms of material organization with their general and partial aspects. Second, we
must imagine these edifices in the midst of the ancient society that produced them,
and of whom they are one of the most remarkable expressions, in order for these same
bodies to be animated with their proper life. One will notice that these two branches of
synthetic archaeology are as distinct as anatomy and physiology of organic bodies, a simple
comparison that will suffice to make one appreciate its full value [my emphasis].16
The anatomy–physiology analogy is particularly relevant to our discussion.
Anatomy is the study of an organism “in a state of rest,” with the aim of
understanding its interior organization and its connections. Physiology is the
study of the mechanism of life, in other words, the dynamic relation of organs
among themselves and with their environment. In the nineteenth century,
physiology was considered to be a higher science: “general physiology” treated
the phenomenon of life from a high philosophical point of view. Originating
from insights found in the writings of Johann Gottfried Herder, the appeal to
that branch of biology had been a key element in the new social sciences defined
by the disciples of Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon, among others. The coupling
of anatomy and physiology also roughly corresponds to the two principles of
272 architecture and the historical imagination
Cuvier’s comparative anatomy: the principle of correlation (anatomy) and the
principle of conditions of existence (physiology). Woillez himself summarized
his archaeological principle as follows: monuments must be explained, he
wrote, “by considering them in and of themselves” and by considering them “in
relation to the society that has given birth to them: such is the double product
into which serious archaeological studies must be resolved.”17
It is compelling to bring together Woillez’s two-fold division and Violletle-Duc’s construction–architecture split. Woillez himself never identified
construction as the key to a building’s “anatomy.” Keeping too literally to his
analogy, he sought to account for all layers of a building, from structure to
ornamental details, structure having no special pre-eminence. This inclusivity
led to a complex and confusing system of classification that bore little fruit.
Working from a similar biological model, the historian Jules Quicherat
would take the step of making structure one of the keys to the intelligibility of
his scientific classification system. Quicherat, who had turned to the study of
medieval architecture in the 1840s after having been appointed to the newly
created chair in medieval archaeology at the École des Chartres, identified the
construction of the vault as the conceptual basis for understanding the unity
of development of medieval churches. According to him, the construction of
the vault was the motivating cause of architectural evolution in the Middle
Ages.18 Viollet-le-Duc’s articles published in Annales archéologiques, appearing
at the moment when Quicherat took up the study of medieval archaeology,
most certainly played a role in Quicherat’s system. Still, Quicherat had his
originality. Even if driven by a nationalist sentiment, he did not want to take
part in the Neo-Gothic crusade: he considered his work to be earnest rather
than polemical. His “De l’ogive et de l’architecture dite ogivale” and “De
l’architecture romane” were published in installments in the pages of the very
serious Revue archéologique, a journal that often mocked Adolphe-Napoléon
Didron’s militant Annales archéologiques. Quicherat’s archaeology was
systematic. Structure, for him, formed the basis of a scientific “classification
of species.” He used the differentiation of the vault to distinguish classes,
orders, species, and families. He was thus able to bring a great level of clarity
to medieval architectural studies, which led some of his pupils to call him
the founder of a national archaeology. Quicherat’s articles on medieval
architecture appeared just when Viollet-le-Duc was setting to work on the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture.19 They no doubt challenged Viollet-leDuc to adopt a more rigorous method drawn from the sciences, the more so
since Quicherat also developed an extensive analogy with language.
Whatever the extent of their influence on Viollet-le-Duc, the works of
Woillez and Quicherat well illustrate efforts in the field of archaeology to
transform the organic analogy into a bona fide method. The reach of the new
biological paradigm was so strong that even investigations quite distant
from it embraced biological categories. The case of Léonce Reynaud’s Traité
d’architecture is revealing. Though Reynaud’s treatise is rather traditional in
format, Adolphe Lance explained its two-volume structure in the same terms
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 273
as Woillez had used to define his archaeological method. In the first volume,
explains Lance, Reynaud concentrates solely on construction: “He operates,”
writes Lance, “on the dead body as it were, and his book, if we may be
allowed to use this metaphor, seems to be about the anatomy of architecture.”
“The second part [it was not yet published],” continues Lance, “will show us
the physiology, and, without doubt, we will then seize art within its life [l’art
dans sa vie], within the multiplicity of its manifestations and the variety of
its development.”20 Lance’s comments were rather forced, given the narrow
scope of Reynaud’s Traité, its neglect of social factors, and its very conventional
conception of construction. But they show how much the biological analogy
was in the air.
The first installment of Lance’s review of Reynaud’s treatise appeared in
March 1853, the very month Viollet-le-Duc, Reynaud, and Vaudoyer were
appointed Inspecteurs généraux des édifices diocésains. Viollet-le-Duc must
have been goaded by such an extended and positive review of the work
of his new colleague, all the more so because the treatise was an instant
publishing success. If we add to that the fact that Reynaud stood for a
competing architectural faction (he had more or
less ignored the Gothic in his treatise), we can
safely assume that the Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture was conceived in part as a reaction
to Reynaud’s book. Yet Lance’s conjuring-up of
the coupling of anatomy–physiology goes along
with Viollet-le-Duc’s wish to treat medieval art
as “the development and the life of a living
being.” It fits with Viollet-le-Duc’s splitting
of his topic along the two main headings of
“Construction” and “Architecture.” Violletle-Duc, of course, does not acknowledge
Woillez, Quicherat, or Reynaud. He made
only the obligatory (and by then conventional)
critical references to the work of Arcisse de
Caumont.
The Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
succeeds best among these works in integrating
and making palpable the biological paradigm.
Quicherat may have produced a more
systematic and scientific classificatory work,
but Viollet-le-Duc was able to craft a genuinely
“organic” portrait of medieval architecture.
The extraordinary anatomical character of the
intricate drawings that animate the pages of
the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture was
obviously a prime factor (Fig. 8.3). But Violletle-Duc’s attempt to unravel the drama of
8.3 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Arch springers at
column capital.
Wood engraving
by H. Lavoignat.
Fig. 49bis of
“Construction,”
from Dictionnaire
raisonné de
l’architecture, vol.
4, 1859. Private
collection
274 architecture and the historical imagination
8.4 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Comparative
illustrations of
the evolution
of the column
capital. Wood
engravings by
E. Guillaumot,
Guillaumot the
Younger and A.
Pégard. Figs. 45,
46 and 46bis of
“Chapiteau,”
from Dictionnaire
raisonné de
l’architecture, vol.
2, 1856. Private
collection
medieval architecture, showing not only the socio-political events that gave
it shape, but also the gestures, the dress, and the customs of the social groups
that built it, is more deserving of the label “physiology” than Woillez’s
confusing mass of divisions and Quicherat’s relatively abstract schema.
The archaeologist Aimé Champollion-Figeac will actually label, somewhat
disparagingly, the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture a “physiological
treatise on the ancient architecture of France.”21
Viollet-le-Duc held that the architecture of the Middle Ages was “intimately
tied to our history, … to our national character whose principal traits, tendencies
and direction it reproduces.”22 Yet he was a firm believer in autonomy when
it came to matters of building: constructive processes, according to him,
develop by virtue of an independent logic, following a natural evolution of
form that neither the artist nor his society can really anticipate or control. This
is the reason why Henri Focillon was such a great defender of Viollet-le-Duc’s
archaeology. The article on “Construction” indeed seizes “the life of form” in
a mode not unworthy of the great French art historian. For instance, the article
on “Chapiteau,” to mention an example singled out by Damisch, describes a
process of transformation from the eleventh to the twelfth centuries whereby
the capital evolved from a discrete decorative element into an “intelligent
expansion of the shaft” as if it finally “took its function of support seriously.”23
The structural adjustment that Viollet-le-Duc describes is a metamorphosis,
as the capital progressively “grew” into its proper shape within a topological
ensemble (Fig. 8.4). The builder simply allowed the phenomenon to take its
natural course.
To better understand the phenomenon, we must consider that Viollet-leDuc identified two types of determinism at work in the architecture of the
Middle Ages, each corresponding to a distinct phase in its evolution. In the
Romanesque period, the “génie provincial”—a local determinism—is the chief
shaping agent. We have seen how Viollet-le-Duc argued that the “geography”
of Romanesque styles followed the geological divisions of the French territory,
emphasizing thereby an architecture born of the soil. Each province had its
own school, bearing the mark of local materials, customs, and various cultural
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 275
influences specific to the region. In this less vital phase, architecture was the
true product of its milieu in a narrow sense.
In the Gothic period, the situation changes: thanks to the process of national
unification, a galvanic energy now runs through France. From that moment on,
“the provincial genius loses its originality and merges into a single architecture,
which spreads successively to the whole territory of France.”24 The foyer of that
transformation is the Île-de-France: the domaine royal at the centre of the nation.
But it spreads quickly, so that, in far-flung regions of France, buildings are soon
erected that constitute, in relation to their local context, “exotic monuments,
not tied to the indigenous constructions of that region.”25 Nationalism itself is
conceived as a kind of energy that runs through the entire country, understood
as one living body, following Michelet’s very suggestive description in his
Tableaux de France of 1833. So just as nineteenth-century biologists had described
life as a special phenomenon that overcame matter’s natural passive tendency,
the nationalization process according to Viollet-le-Duc is a special energy
that supersedes “normal” conditions of historical existence. Nationalism
paradoxically causes architecture to transcend its environment, acquiring
laws internal to itself. “Governmental unity emerged, and under its influence
architecture divested itself of old forms borrowed from left and right, in order
to abide by the laws that transformed it into a national art.”26 It is, of course, no
coincidence that the process described by Viollet-le-Duc corresponds exactly
to the sort of homogenization inherent to the establishment of the nation state
in the nineteenth century. Even if, among Europeans, the French probably
most readily identified with their country, the “nation” remained far from a
spontaneous phenomenon. It had to be constructed, which explains the crucial
importance of institutions capable of imposing national uniformity.
The means by which the political phenomenon described by Viollet-le-Duc
is internalized within the field of architecture is never clearly accounted for.
The cathedral is a symbol of political unification,27 but he tends to describe
it as an unconscious one, product of an irresistible urge: the same vitality
or “will” that makes the country makes the architecture. The monarchy
successfully emerges as a centralizing power because it embodies the people.28
Similarly, Gothic architecture rises into being because it embodies the spirit of
a defiant lay population constituting itself into associations. The key element is
obviously the vitality of the people. Lay architects building cathedrals “were
possessed by a fever of research and activity.” Their building enterprises were
“a perpetual experiment.”29 As cathedrals are built in short intervals, their
formal transformation occurs in the image of natural growth. The evolution of
ornamental forms is its clearest sign:
What a marvel! the architectural imitation of vegetation seems to follow an order
similar to the order of nature. Examples are there at hand to see. Buds are the first
visible phenomenon of life in a plant; buds in turn give birth to shoots, or young
branches, with leaves and flowers on them. When, at the end of the twelfth century,
French architecture starts to make use of the [local] flora as motifs of decoration, it
began with imitations of cotyledons, buds, and shoots, to soon reach the reproduction
276 architecture and the historical imagination
of stems and fully developed leaves. It goes without saying that the same synthetic
method was followed even more so in statics and in all the methods employed by
architecture to resist destructive agents.30
Medieval builders are irresistibly drawn along in this quasi-“natural” process
of transformation. It is the product of a (national) instinct rather than a series
of rational deductions. Or rather, instinct and reason merge as expressions of
a euphoric desire for self-affirmation. Experimentation, deductions, intuitions
are working indiscriminately to allow the creature “cathedral” to develop.
Viollet-le-Duc’s insistence that the cathedral is above all a civic monument
built by enfranchised lay associations rather than just a building serving
church functions is thus not primarily an expression of his anticlericalism.
It is his way of liberating the cathedral from any determinism aside from
the inner drive that propelled lay builders. The “méthode synthétique,” to use
Viollet-le-Duc’s term, describes that internal logic that brings the work of art
to achieve its own finality. The experimental mode that characterizes the Gothic
is defined by this successivity, this enchaînement. The Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture follows this synthetic method in its way. Ultimately, it assumes an
identification between the subject (the builder) and the object (the cathedral),
which recalls Ruskin’s argument in “The Nature of Gothic” (1853), except
that in the case of Viollet-le-Duc, it is not the builder’s temperament which is
impressed into the architecture through ornamental work, but his own body
through the structural form. In a particularly significant passage of the article
on “Architecture,” Viollet-le-Duc marvels at the cathedral’s corporeality:
We are struck by the interior organization of these edifices. Just as the human body is held
up and moves thanks to two simple, spindly supports, occupying the least amount of
space possible near the ground, and complexifying and developing itself higher up as
it must progressively contain a greater number of crucial organs, so the Gothic building
is held on the simplest kinds of support, merely a sort of pinning whose stability is
maintained only by the combination and development of its upper parts. The Gothic
edifice can stand only if it is complete; one cannot cut off one of its organs without risking
that it will perish, because it acquires stability only through the law of equilibrium.31
This is not an inconsequential metaphor. Viollet-le-Duc uses terms drawn
directly from biology as it was popularized throughout the century. Notions
of increased equilibrium and complexity were central to the nineteenthcentury version of the great chain of being. The law of antagonism was
fundamental to the Romantic definition of life and “organs in equilibrium”
were its necessary corollary. Viollet-le-Duc is thus renewing the Vitruvian
body metaphor and “correcting” its meaning according to recent scientific
developments. The most decisive change is that the translation of the
human body into architecture is not the product of an imitative process, as
in the classical tradition, but of an instinctive feeling. In an aside to the third
“Entretien” dealing with the Greek temple, and written at the same time
as the article on “Construction” in the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture,
Viollet-le-Duc writes that “of all organized beings, man is the most complete,
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 277
and this relative perfection is so visible and real, that he has become master
of all living beings. He is the myth of the structure; so, if one wants to build,
he must be used as model [my emphasis].”32 Following Viollet-le-Duc’s
historical dialectics (which we will analyze later), the Gothic cathedral is the
most intense or evolved stage of the bodily translation, reflecting the sense
of individual responsibility and freedom brought about by Christianity. This
is why a physiology of architecture was conceivable. In this sense, the gap
between architecture and construction is not so much the interval between
signs described by Damisch, as the space that allows the instinctive energy to
be liberated, letting the cathedral build itself.
The Ideal Cathedral
In tracking some of the sources that oriented Viollet-le-Duc’s organic
conception, I omitted references to works on the natural sciences apart from
my brief evocation of Georges Cuvier. Given the pervasive aspect of the
biological paradigm within nineteenth-century culture, there may be no need
to draw directly from any specific body of works. Judging from the contents
of his library, Viollet-le-Duc did not seem to have been particularly well read
in the natural sciences apart from geology. He undoubtedly kept abreast of
recent developments, in part through conversations with his scientist friends.33
But, by and large, he was as much an amateur as any of his contemporaries
fascinated by the breakthroughs in natural sciences and biology.
There is one source, however, worth considering more closely: the anatomical
work of the eccentric Jean-Marc Bourgery, especially his monumental Traité
complet de l’anatomie de l’homme (1831–1854), generally recognized as the most
lavish human anatomy treatise produced in the nineteenth century. Viollet-leDuc was acquainted with Bourgery at least since his late teens, as the doctor,
a great lover of medieval architecture, had settled near Delécluze’s house at
Fontenay-aux-Roses in the early 1830s. As we have seen, Delécluze enjoyed an
exceptionally intimate friendship with Bourgery. Their relation had developed
around late-evening discussions about science and the nature of the universe,
Bourgery having a highly imaginative and speculative mind despite the
austerity of his anatomical works, prone to moments of great idealism, if not
mysticism. Together with Delécluze, Bourgery would occasionally carry out
simple experiments at Fontenay-aux-Roses using microscopes or telescopes,
striving to comprehend both the infinitely small and the infinitely vast. Their
scientific conversations were intertwined with discussions on architecture, the
two friends quarreling over the relative merit of the Gothic and classicism.
Painting must also have been an important topic of conversation. As we have
seen in Chapter 7, Bourgery is famous in medical history for having developed a
new realistic mode of anatomical illustration. His representations were notable
for having been made in situ during specially arranged dissections. The artist
he chose to illustrate the Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme was NicolasHenri Jacob, a painter trained in the school of Jacques-Louis David. It is likely
278 architecture and the historical imagination
that Delécluze had a direct influence in his choice, particularly since he always
cherished the idea that art could be a vector within scientific enquiry following
the model of Leonardo da Vinci. We can therefore assume that the friendship
between Bourgery and Delécluze was not limited to “after hours” musings, but
must also have come into play in shaping the anatomical treatise. Delécluze
promoted Bourgery’s anatomical work in two important articles published in
the Journal des débats and the Journal de Paris. Quite familiar with the practice of
anatomy from his days in David’s studio, it is even probable that Delécluze was
present at some of the dissection sessions Bourgery set up for Jacob.
Was Viollet-le-Duc also present? The period of Delécluze’s friendship with
Bourgery stretches from the beginning of the 1830s to close to the latter’s
death in 1849. By 1828, Viollet-le-Duc had already left Fontenay-aux-Roses,
but remained close to Delécluze at least until 1832. We know that Bourgery
was aware of him from a letter in which Delécluze reported that Bourgery
had remarked that, in his opinion, Viollet-le-Duc was destined to a great
future,34 a comment that assumes more than a passing acquaintance. It is
difficult to resist the thought that Viollet-le-Duc would have been interested
in Bourgery’s anatomical work. Teaching drawing at the École de Dessin
under the dome of the old anatomy theatre on rue de l’École-de-Médecine
since 1834, Viollet-le-Duc would have been naturally curious about Bourgery
and Jacob’s experiments in coupling the two disciplines. We at least know
that he purchased (at huge cost) the lavish anatomy treatise—by far the most
prominent work on natural sciences in his library.
If we put aside Jacob’s illustrations, which, as we saw, have some kinship
with the figures of Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, the
heavy and dense series of folios composing the Traité complet de l’anatomie de
l’homme seem at first an unlikely reference for Viollet-le-Duc. An attentive
reading, however, unveils a rather more captivating text than appears
at first, one that draws the reader into convolutions typical of Romantic
biology. Though it is impossible to know how attentively Viollet-le-Duc read
Bourgery’s Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, there are methodological
parallels between it and the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture that really
help shed light on the latter, notably the positing of a “type” of human body
similar to Viollet-le-Duc’s famous notion of the “ideal” cathedral.
Bourgery was probably a disciple of Buchez, whom he quotes repeatedly
in his treatise. Like the dissident Saint-Simonian, he conceived anatomy as a
“science-principe”35 that ought “to serve as the basis of morality, legislation,
and political economy,”36 a social utopianism that colors Bourgery’s whole
conception of the human body. He describes the human body as the site of a
dialectical struggle between matter and life in ways that leave no doubt that a
similar struggle is at work in the social sphere. Matter and life are inextricably
linked, the latter being understood as a primordial formative power.
The well-established principles of Cuvier’s comparative anatomy generally
directed Bourgery’s Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme. It was indeed thanks
to Cuvier’s mentorship that the whole enterprise took off, Cuvier having just
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 279
enough time before his death to enthusiastically welcome the first volume. One
section of Bourgery’s treatise, however, was more speculative. Titled “Anatomie
philosophique,” it was divided in three parts: “first, … the theory of the ideal
formation of the vertebra; … second, the examination of the influence of the
time, the climate, the habits, … upon the development of the … organism; …
third, the comparison of the organization of man with those of other vertebrate
animals.”37 These divisions, according to Bourgery, “establish the transition
between anatomy proper and physiology.”38 In other words, from the study
of organs we move toward the analysis of life dynamics within a given
environment. It is the same twofold analysis, which, as we saw earlier, a group
of medieval archaeologists sought to introduce within their own field.
The term “anatomie philosophique” used by Bourgery to describe his work
betrays a speculative attitude that goes beyond Cuvier’s science. The latter
had indeed detected that strain and felt compelled to warn Bourgery in his
review of the first volume in 1831. The expression “philosophical” was an
unmistakable reference to the work of Cuvier’s famous rival Étienne Geoffroy
de Saint-Hilaire, whose key work was titled Philosophie anatomique (1818).
The difference of opinion between these two leading figures in the natural
sciences generated a well-known debate in the European scientific world
just as Bourgery was beginning his treatise. Cuvier was a staunch defender
of the invariability of species, conceiving all animal forms as having been
created once and for all by God to live in a given set of conditions. It did not
preclude the idea of changes in the course of natural history; Cuvier, after
all, is chiefly associated with the discovery and restitution of extinct species.
But these shifts were not the product of a “natural” transformation; rather,
they were the outcome of revolutions in nature. Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, in
contrast, sought to identify a basic structural analogy between all organisms
that formed the basis of a principle of transformation. A single and immanent
vital force ran through the cosmos: the quantity of such force imparted to
each organism determined their position—and their form—within the great
chain of being. Hence, the whole chain offered the panorama of an on-going
metamorphosis, from the lowest animal to man. Man embodied of course
the highest form of vitality, and could thus be conceived as the final end of
nature. Bourgery never refers directly to Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, but clearly
he adhered to his philosophical anatomy. In his volume on osteology, for
instance, he describes the vertebra as the “fundamental bone” from which all
others are but transformations, including the bones of the skull. This principle
of metamorphosis, originally derived from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s
celebrated Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären (The Metamorphosis
of Plants) (1790), in which all organs of the Urpflanz, or archetypal plant, are
described as the transformation of the leaf, was the very basis of Geoffroy de
Saint-Hilaire’s idea of unity of plan. A general life force directs and unifies
nature’s morphological transformation. I should add that, judging from a
passage in the Entretiens sur l’architecture published in 1863, Viollet-le-Duc
was himself an adept of Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire’s theory of a unity of plan.39
8.5 Nicolas-Henri Jacob. Frontispiece from Jean-Marc Bourgery, Traité complet
de l’anatomie de l’homme, vol. 1, 1832. Lithograph. Reproduced by permission
of the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 281
Probably the most notable consequence of this conception, and what
makes Bourgery’s anatomical work unique and particularly interesting in the
context of our discussion of Viollet-le-Duc, is his need to posit, in the very first
pages of his treatise (both in text and in illustration) (Fig. 8.5), a model of the
ideal human body:
In order to make all the parts of our work [of descriptive anatomy] easily
comparable, we had to establish for ourselves an ideal type of the most beautiful
form and of the most perfect development of the species, the type from which
all [anatomical] figures would be equally drawn. To this end, we have suitably
described a man of the Caucasian race, five feet tall, aged 33, endowed with the
most pleasing proportions. To this type, we relate our study of the child and of
the elderly: in other words, it is always the same ideal individual that we describe
as he must have been, and as he would be following the aging process. The
woman, who is nothing but man modified to accomplish certain functions, must
also be described for each of the parts of her organization in which she offers
dissimilarities.40
His Caucasian male of 33 was modelled following Davidian aesthetic canons,
drawing especially upon Jacques-Nicolas Paillot de Montabert’s Traité complet
de la peinture (1829–1851). This ten-volume work by another student of David
had been singled out by Delécluze as the ultimate articulation of the “secret
doctrine” current in their great master’s studio. There are parallels between
Bourgery’s Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme and Paillot de Montabert’s
Traité complet de la peinture: as the former refers to the theory of painting to
establish his ideal model of the human body, the latter makes the science of
anatomy central to his idealistic theory of drawing. It is even probable that
Bourgery and Paillot de Montabert had direct contact, as both men belonged to
Delécluze’s entourage.
Bourgery must propose an ideal model in order to establish “formal”
comparative norms for the healthy and vital human body. As he writes, a
“science of [human] forms” provides an “element of diagnosis,” “deformation
… being a necessary effect of all illnesses.”41 The device, however, is not only
an “objective” measuring tool: its introduction at the very beginning of the
text, with its illustration used as frontispiece, and the highly symbolic age of
“33” for the ideal model, assumes a deeper conceptual reach: the type-form—
“the most perfect development of the species”—legitimizes the empirical
knowledge gathered within the pages of the anatomical treatise. The allusion
to Christ should not deceive the reader in thinking that Bourgery adhered to
Christian dogma as did Cuvier. The Caucasian male of 33 is biblical in flavor,
but embraces the Romantic conception of Jesus as “the ecstatic human being
living entirely out of the centre of a productive self,” in the words of Eric
Voegelin.42 Bourgery’s ideal human is an instance of the post-Enlightenment
“empirical-transcendental” dilemma described by Michel Foucault in Les
mots et les choses.43 Following in the footsteps of Buchez, the empirical body is
the model, but a body seized at its maximum level of vitality, product of the
perfect equilibrium between the material and the spiritual. Not surprisingly,
282 architecture and the historical imagination
Bourgery’s text integrates the notions of instinct and race as determinant agents.
“Without a vital instinct,” writes Bourgery, “the most noble faculties may stay
unemployed. … The instinct … possesses man and forces him to act. It alone is
original.”44 He continues: “It is through his spiritual self, transmissible through
the race, that are produced, thanks to the collective work of generations, all great
manifestations of the spirit.”45 Just as we have seen in Viollet-le-Duc, Bourgery
will be led to see human creations as a form of exteriorization of the body:
In all applications of the mind within the external world, the organism does but copy
itself, transposing itself, as it were, and imposing itself upon nature. … man does
not precisely invent anything, since he imagines only what he senses within himself,
applying to the outside what he is, or what he has been made inside.46
Relying upon the conditions and the experience of the body to characterize
human creation, Bourgery leans toward the phenomenological, a tendency
already found in Buchez and the early Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve.
Let’s return to Viollet-le-Duc and his concept of the so-called “ideal
cathedral,” long held by historians as one of the hallmarks of the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture. In point of fact, the bird’s-eye view of a “completed”
cathedral, which takes up a full page in the long article “Cathedral” in volume
two (1856) of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture,47 does not have the same
pre-eminence as Bourgery’s ideal man, which was illustrated and discussed
in the very first pages of his treatise (Fig. 8.6). To my knowledge, Viollet-leDuc never referred to his “perfect” cathedral anywhere else than in that short
passage in the second volume of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture,
though its form does occasionally reappear, most notably in his short
novella Histoire d’un hôtel de ville et d’une cathédrale, published in 1875.48 Yet
the image and the concept act as a magnet within the Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture. Together with the famous drawing of the exploded perspective
of the springing point of the arch of the nave of a “typical” thirteenth-century
cathedral illustrated under the heading “Construction,” it is emblematic of
Viollet-le-Duc’s whole architectural conception: the exploded perspective
shows the tight imbrications of individual parts as if it was the “ideal
vertebra,” while the image of the cathedral “completed, accomplished, just
as it had been conceived” gives the image of the indivisible body. The latter
drawing is the only one among the many thousands figures of the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture that provides an overall exterior view of a Gothic
church. There are plenty of bird’s-eye views of castles and fortresses, but only
one of a cathedral. It is a daring dream image, the wish fantasy of “seeing”
complete the bristling monument with its seven spires. It is the same fantasy
of completion that pushed Viollet-le-Duc to propose the termination of the
towers of the western façade of Notre-Dame in a particularly magnificent
steel engraving inserted in the first volume of the Entretiens sur l’architecture
(Fig. 8.7). But only at Clermont-Ferrand Cathedral would Viollet-le-Duc be
able to achieve his dream image (Fig. 8.8).
8.6 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Ideal thirteenth-century cathedral based on Reims
Cathedral. Wood engraving by H. Lavoignat. Fig. 18 of “Cathédrale,” from
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, vol. 2, 1856. Private collection
8.7 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Facade of Notre-Dame of Paris. Steel engraving by
Claude Sauvageot. Pl. XIV from Entretiens sur l’architecture, vol. 1, 1863. Private
collection. Project for the completion of the western facade of Notre-Dame
8.8 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Cathedral of Clermont. Facade project. 1864. Ink
and wash. 120.0 × 65.5 cm. MAP. © Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque
du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
286 architecture and the historical imagination
Many historians have underscored the importance and originality of Violletle-Duc’s concept of an ideal cathedral. In point of fact, it has a direct precedent
in Léonce Reynaud’s notion of an “ideal type” first developed in his 1839
article on “Architecture” in the Encyclopédie nouvelle. For Reynaud, each style
of architecture—each “historical system” as he called it—had a “type form,”
which he calculated to be the specimen that came closest to the average ratio
of solids and voids within that stylistic period.49 It reflected his conception of
the history of architecture as a progressive lightening of structure, from the
solid mass of Egyptian pyramids to the spacious cathedrals of the Middle
Ages. In his later Traité d’architecture contenant des notions générales sur les
principes de construction et l’histoire de l’art, Reynaud loosened his schema, but
he still held fast to the idea of a type-form within each historical style, “the
complete expression of the architectural system to which it belongs.”50 Within
the Gothic, Amiens Cathedral was held to be the type, thanks to its unity and
lightness. But Reynaud never pushed the concept to the point of representing
an ideal cathedral. His type-form was simply the “classic” specimen of a style,
like, say, the Parthenon within Greek architecture.
It is indeed Viollet-le-Duc’s desire to visualize and fix the ideal form of
the cathedral that is so extraordinary. Historians have rightfully emphasized
the fictive character of the representation. Bergdoll, for instance, describes the
composition as “a historical amalgam of several cathedrals,” a pure product of
Viollet-le-Duc’s imagination.51 Jean-Michel Leniaud, for his part, describes the
famous drawing as an “exhaustive illustration of the system,” but one “that
possesses no reality.”52 This last observation may be pushing too far the fictive
character of the image. If we trust Viollet-le-Duc’s own account, the drawing
is a restoration of the cathedral at Reims, carried out with some measure of
interpretive liberty, but only in order to better restore the conception of its
first architect. Here is the passage in which he presents his famous drawing:
In order to give an idea of what must have been a cathedral of the thirteenth century,
complete and finished as it would have been conceived then, we reproduce a
bird’s-eye view of a monument of that time, carried out following the type adopted
at Reims. Disregarding details, to which we do not here attach importance, we can
admit that the monument conceived by Robert de Coucy [at Reims] must have appeared in
that form [my emphasis], except that the western spires were never completed and
the central one was made of wood and lead. On July 24, 1481, lead workers, whose
names have come down to us (Jean and Remi Legoix), set fire to the roof through
negligence. The fire destroyed all the wooden framework. … It was impossible to
think of rebuilding the monument in its original state. … The work had to be limited
to rebuilding the wooden framework, the upper galleries, the gables, to repair the
entry towers and to raze the four towers of the transept down to the level of the great
attic. It is in this state that we find today that monument, still splendid despite the
mutilations to which it was subjected.53
Far from an abstraction, Viollet-le-Duc relates very precise historical events.
He acknowledges taking some liberties (the central spire, for instance, was
originally of wood and lead), but his intention is clearly that his “ideal”
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 287
cathedral be a reflection of Reims as originally conceived by the architect in
the thirteenth century. Swiss and French medievalists Peter Kurmann and
Alain Villes have recently pursued an analysis of the drawing, demonstrating
the rigor of Viollet-le-Duc’s attempt to deduce the appearance of Reims as
conceived in its first period.54 Villes even drew his own recreation of Reims,
based on exhaustive empirical research, and after an aerial photo taken from
an angle deliberately close to that chosen by Viollet-le-Duc. With its seven
towers, including the astonishing spire at the crossing, it is surprisingly close
to the version dreamed by Viollet-le-Duc. But there are a few significant
differences: Villes’s version is more systematic than Viollet-le-Duc—each
of his three sets of twin towers are composed of identical spires whereas
Viollet-le-Duc allowed subtle variations among the three pairs which he
thought more characteristic of Gothic. Even more significant, Villes infiltrates
his reconstruction with flamboyant elements, particularly the western
front, which would have been built last. In other words, Villes’s re-creation
acknowledges the lapse of time that the construction would have required,
and integrates the inevitable change of taste.
Viollet-le-Duc’s restitution does not follow such a realistic premise. What
interests him is what the architect had in mind when he originally conceived
Reims, not what Reims would have looked like if it had been built in the course
of the thirteenth century. He sought to seize, as if by magic, a vision of Reims
as first conceived. His motivation is similar to Bourgery’s desire to freeze an
image of man at his “most perfect moment of development.” The cathedral, as
an architectural organism, can only be understood through its development
in time, from one cathedral to the next, each successive transition bringing
it closer to a formal unity. Once the maximum level of cohesion is achieved
and the principle that directed its development is exhausted, the cathedral
progressively falls prey to more arbitrary and even monstrous manipulations.
As we have seen, Viollet-le-Duc described this evolution using a biological
analogy, the passage from childhood to old age “through continuous and
imperceptible transformations, without it being possible to identify the
day when childhood ceases and old age begins.” His drawing of the ideal
cathedral is a means of seizing the culminating moment of that evolution, just
like Bourgery’s Caucasian male of 33 was the human body at its maximum
vitality. So, like the latter, Viollet-le-Duc’s cathedral must be at once real and
ideal. It is the cathedral at Reims as it really was first conceived, but abstracted
from historical circumstances that would, in all likelihood, have modified its
appearance as construction proceeded. It is “reality,” but frozen in time. We are
facing the same empirico-transcendental doublet which, following Foucault,
we had identified in Bourgery’s idealized human figure. What Viollet-le-Duc
draws from Reims is not a stabilized “object,” but a transcendent moment
within historical existence.
Viollet-le-Duc’s representation is evanescent. With its seven iridescent
towers, the cathedral seems to dematerialize. Viollet-le-Duc has repeatedly
underscored the purely visual role played by the spectacularly slender towers,
288 architecture and the historical imagination
their myriad crochets and fleurons conferring a unique vitality to the form.55
Reading the articles on “Clocher,” “Crochet,” “Flèche,” or “Fleuron” in the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, we gather that these fascinating elements
were, according to Viollet-le-Duc, expressions of life and energy. The bell
towers were nothing other, he writes, than a “signe de puissance”56: “If religious
sentiment was the reason to build churches, writes Viollet-le-Duc, the sense of
being rich or powerful was the motivation for the erection of bell towers.”57 As
such, the towers are “the most sensible expression of the civilization … of the
period; … in short, … the true national monument.”58 It was an architectural
element native to French Gothic, the “domaine royal” being “la véritable patrie des
flèches” according to Viollet-le-Duc.”59 Later, in L’art russe, he would describe
these vertical protrusions as characteristic of the Aryans.60 No wonder Violletle-Duc longed to show the cathedral “as it should have been completed.”
He chose Reims—“the queen of French cathedrals”61—in part because it was
the nearest to such a state of “completion,” but Amiens—“l’église ogivale par
excellence”62—or Beauvais—“the Parthenon of French architecture”63—would
have been equally eloquent examples. This trio of French churches stood at
the apex of that “outpouring of force and imagination”64 that overtook French
architecture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. “Everything that arises
during that period is irresistible,” writes Viollet-le-Duc.65
Compulsion to Repeat
From the above discussion, it is clear that the key to the Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture is the correlation between the evolution of French Gothic and
the growth of living organisms. The analogy was hardly new, of course,
harking back to no less than the father of the discipline of art history Johann
Joachim Winckelmann. By transposing the well-known schema to the Middle
Ages, and by giving it a more scientific and organic aura, Viollet-le-Duc
wished to ennoble France’s artistic production with an intelligibility which
in the past had been reserved for the highest achievement of ancient art. Let’s
recall the comment by the Hellenist Charles-Ernest Beulé, effectively that
the “désordre” of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture was inherent in its
subject matter. Much of the work in medieval archaeology in the course of
the nineteenth century can be envisaged as an answer to that sort of criticism,
trying to shed light on and discover the logic of architectural development
within the mysterious interregnum of the Middle Ages. The manner in which
Viollet-le-Duc developed the organic model obviously extends well beyond
Winckelmann. No longer a metaphor for an idealistic conception of art, it
was conceived as a bona fide analogy following the nineteenth-century idea
according to which social and biological phenomena follow similar patterns
of development. The biological paradigm conferred upon the architectural
object the status of a natural formation born organically from the nation’s
blood and soil.
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 289
The issue I now wish to raise in this last section is whether or not the biological
model extended beyond that broad sociological level. We have seen how Violletle-Duc intensified the concept through the use of a corporal metaphor,
the cathedral having been created in the image of the human body itself.
Following the theme of incorporation with which this book opened, it may
well be appropriate to ask: how does the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
assimilate Viollet-le-Duc’s more intimate process of identification to the
Middle Ages? How did his history of Gothic relate to the reworking of his
self?
It is, of course, difficult to provide definite answers, but some interesting
remarks can be made. First, I want to emphasize the compulsive nature of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture as an enterprise. The growing scale of the
work in the first years of its development did not so much reflect a deliberate
shift in intention as an inadvertent response to an irresistible drive. From the
article on “Arc” onward, Viollet-le-Duc regularly allowed articles to span over
40–60 pages or more. The article on “Architecture” stands out at 337 pages, the
section on “L’Architecture militaire” alone—the longest—being 126 pages. In
the second volume, the articles on “Autel” and “Base” span over 40 pages each;
on “Cathédrale,” 114; and on “Chapelle” and “Chapiteau,” around 60 each.
Viollet-le-Duc gets carried away, as if the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
was a kind of roman en feuilletons. The work has indeed something of the
density and intricacy of Les mystères de Paris or Les trois mousquetaires. And, we
should recall, he was paid by the installment.
The desire for financial gain should not be dismissed, but it would be
reductive to attribute the expansion of the work to that single factor. Edward
Said has written classic pages about the all-encompassing nature of scholarly
work in the nineteenth century, product of the era’s urge to reconcile “the
manner of a scientist with that of a biblical teacher.”66 Said emphasized
Oriental studies, but the attraction to Gothic architecture and the Middle
Ages in general, a foreign presence nested within the West, was not entirely
different from the passion for the Orient. Here again we are reminded of John
Ruskin, this time in his Modern Painters rather than The Stones of Venice. The
compulsive nature of Ruskin’s masterpiece is well known. In a letter to his
tutor Osborne Gordon, Ruskin describes the development of the work as
follows:
The [original idea of a] pamphlet turned into a volume. Before the volume was half
way dealt with[,] it hydrized into three heads, and each head became a volume.
Finding that nothing could be done except on such enormous scale, I determined to
take the hydra by the horns, and produce a complete treatise on landscape art.67
The monstrous growth of a pamphlet into five massive volumes is a good
example of the frenzied imagination of the nineteenth-century, a time when
scholars wanted to establish anew the grounds of a discipline.
Is it possible to capture the monomaniacal character of the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture? Unlike Modern Painters, the Dictionnaire raisonné is not
290 architecture and the historical imagination
a work that captivates by the arabesques of a thinking process. It is marked
by discontinuities: those between articles, and those between words and
images. Our attention is fragmented across these different registers, and the
fragmentation may be seen as a special form of release. Roland Barthes once
described that aspect of dictionaries as a form of emancipation.68 Viollet-leDuc’s Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture was of course not entirely liberated
from long “dissertations” and “development,” but the logic of the alphabet
did provide a simple constructive formula to his goal of restituting the Middle
Ages. I would also add that the euphoria of the “désordre alphabétique”—to
give a positive turn to Beulé’s comment—was probably increased by the
repetitive structure inherent to dictionaries.
The Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture’s repetitions have always been
described as its main pitfall. Yet, repetition is also a surreptitious conduit
for communication. Freud found compulsive repetition in patients’
behavior or language provided privileged access to repressed memories:
through compulsive re-enactment, memories are discharged that otherwise
would not find conscious expression.69 The very act of repeating, whether
compulsive or not, may have a capacity of release. There is no need to
poke into the vast concept of repetition as it operates in psychoanalysis
and critical theory. We can limit ourselves to the simple idea, argued by
Robert Rogers,70 that repetition holds representational value, particularly
when is enacted with variations. As Rogers writes: “repetition is always
re-presentation, and re-presentation is always representation.”71 Repetitive
occurrences provide signposts that convey special information. So, by
paying close attention to what is being repeated, we may be able to identify
precisely what is not random in the randomness of the Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture. Applying this tactic, I wish to identify what Viollet-le-Duc
is “working-through” in his magnum opus, assuming, in a sense, that the
work has forced a process of self-analysis.
Viollet-le-Duc has been accused of being repetitive often enough, but
what does he repeat exactly? His praise of the logic and resourcefulness of
Gothic builders coupled with his vociferations against the Académie des
Beaux-Arts, obviously. But, in themselves, these polemical invectives are
not very revealing. Besides, they may appear more repetitive than they
really are, because we often tend to reread the same central passages of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture. If we conduct a more precise survey, the
most relentless recurrence is the story of the growth, maturity, and decline
of Gothic architecture. It is perhaps inevitable, given the nature of the topic.
But Viollet-le-Duc’s emphatic repetition of that story far exceeds what was
required for the intelligibility of the various articles. Besides, the predictability
of the theme does not exclude its meaningfulness, the issue of “growth and
decline” certainly being a rich one if questions of identity are at stake.
Viollet-le-Duc’s account of the growth of Gothic architecture is always
paired with the story about the struggle for the emancipation of the Third
Estate in its threefold relation to feudality, monastic life, and the monarchy.
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 291
Within the first three volumes of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture,
written between 1853 and 1858, there are nine substantial accounts of that
struggle, which, it should be noted, has no inherent architectural content.
If we add to this list its first and extended articulation in the 1852 article
published in the Revue générale de l’architecture et des travaux publics, we
count ten instances in a six-year period. The central importance of the story
is underscored by the vignette that decorates the title page of each volume
of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture (see Fig. 7.2). Three men gather in
circle in that intriguing composition, each standing for one of the estates of the
realm in French medieval society: to the left, the clergy, on the right, feudal
nobility and, standing in the middle, a lay mason representing the commoner.
That central figure is the active one: addressing the priest while pointing a
finger toward his tracing on the ground of an arc en ogive, the mason is caught
in the process of a geometrical demonstration. In contrast, the noble knight,
dressed in his coat of mail, is seen from behind as a passive onlooker. Through
their posture, we gather that the mason and the priest are involved in an
intellectual exchange. Each draw, however, from different sources: the priest
from the scripture he holds in his hands, the mason from geometry. A more
subtle relationship is established between the lay mason and the knight: both
are bearers of tools: the divider in the case of the mason, and shield and sword
of the knight. In contrast to the priest, they are men of practice.
The vignette is an efficient summary of Viollet-le-Duc’s account of the
process of the emancipation of the Third Estate: combining the daring and
readiness for action of feudal lords with the intellectual discipline developed
in monastic enclaves, the lay population were able to build the great
cathedrals and, concomitantly, initiate a process of emancipation. The king
is appropriately absent from the composition since, according to Viollet-leDuc, he is but a representation of the people. His role in the process is that
of a rallying point for the lay body, crystallizing the idea of unity in his own
person.
Needless to say, the story was hardly original in 1850. But Viollet-le-Duc
seems to have had a special investment in it. I have already noted how he
transposed some of its components to contemporary politics. But I wish to
uncover a deeper, if more risky, transposition, reaching back into Viollet-leDuc’s own childhood development. A passage from the article on “Château”
encouraged me to do so.72 In order to make that crucial passage perfectly
intelligible, let me first quote the eulogy to feudality that immediately
precedes it, one of the many articulations of the process of emancipation of
the Third Estate:
At the end of the twelfth century, the monastic spirit was already in its decline; it had
fulfilled its task. By then the lay constituency had gathered in populous towns; it was
now the turn of bishops and kings to give them a rallying point by building the great
cathedrals. Another danger arose, however: the fear that royal power, assisted by the
bishops, would give rise to a theocratic regime as fixed as the ancient governments
of Egypt. It is then that feudality, perhaps without knowing it, takes on a political
292 architecture and the historical imagination
role. … It throws itself between royalty and clerical influence, preventing these two
powers from merging into one, putting the weight of its weapons sometimes on
one side of the scale, sometimes on the other. It oppresses the people, but it forces
them to live; it awakens them, strikes or assists them, but, in any case, forces them
to recognize themselves, to unite, to defend their rights, to discuss them, even to
resort to force. Developing the habit of taking recourse to royal tribunals, the Third
Estate is drawn to the study of jurisprudence. By its excess even, feudality fosters
the sentiment of indignation of the oppressed toward the oppressor. The envy that
its privileges generate become a vigorous incentive, a profitable ferment of hatred,
because they prevent the inferior classes to forget their precarious position, and forces
them every day to try to emancipate themselves from it. Better still, through its battles
and its mistrust, feudality maintains and sharpens the country’s military spirit, since
it must reckon with the power of weapons; it teaches the urban populations the art
of fortification; it forces them to protect themselves; besides they hold on to certain
chivalric principles of honor that nothing will ever be able to obliterate.73
After this long passage on the awakening of the French people as a body
politic, Viollet-le-Duc shifts to an extended analogy with an individual’s
upbringing:
The education of nations is like that of individuals, whom, when endowed with a sturdy
temperament, learn better about life under the rule of capricious, harsh, and even unjust
regents than under the indulging and paternal hand of the family. … If the French
provinces had gone from monastic influence to the control of an absolute monarchic
regime, they would certainly have enjoyed a happier and more peaceful youth,
their reunion under the latter power would have been achieved without any violent
trauma; but would they have felt that burning desire for union, for national unity,
which today constitutes our strength and tends to increase every day? It is doubtful.
Besides, feudality had an immense advantage within a growing nation: it nurtured
the sense of personal responsibility, which, on the contrary, absolute monarchies
tend to stifle; it taught individuals the habit of battle: it was a tough, oppressive,
persecutory regime, but a healthy one. It assisted royal power by forcing populations
to unite against divided feudal lords, to form themselves into a national body. …
Feudality was a harsh cradle; but the nation that spent its childhood within it was
able to endure such first difficult steps into political life without perishing, was to
gain a vigor that allowed it to go through the greatest perils without ever exhausting
itself. Let’s respect the ruins of [feudal castles], cursed for so long, now that they
have become still and eaten away by time and revolutions; let’s look at them, not as
the remains of oppression and barbarism, but rather as we would look at our house, now
empty, where we have learned, under the rule of a harsh and capricious teacher, to know about
life and to become men [my emphasis].74
This extraordinary passage in volume three was written by Viollet-le-Duc in
late 1857.75 The moment is highly relevant since it follows his father’s death,
on July 12, 1857. So when Viollet-le-Duc summons his readers to contemplate
the ruins of old feudal castles as one “would look at our house, now empty,
where we have learned, under the rule of a harsh and capricious mentor,”
he is not simply making a general analogy, he is evoking his personal life.
That his family house was indeed “empty” following his father’s death, we
can gauge from a note written to himself at the time (August 1857), in which
he reflects on the breaking apart of the family following the quarrels I have
described in chapter one:
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 293
At [my father’s] death I have found a huge mass of [family] letters, dating from the
last century’s revolution to today. Reading them was curious. I couldn’t tear myself
away. … That review left me profoundly sad; so much care, passions, worries,
predictions, protests, threats, expressions of fondness, all this leading to oblivion,
indifference, negation.76
The death of the father consigned the family history to oblivion: the house
stood like the ruins of an old feudal castle, the long extinguished feuds having
taken their toll. The most telling element in the passage, however, is not the
“empty house,” but the repeated mention of a “harsh and capricious mentor,”
an obvious reference to his uncle Delécluze, whose influence we have already
discussed at length. Delécluze will become a type-figure in Viollet-le-Duc’s
post-1871 Histoires. References to the “régent fantasque” in volume three of the
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture must count as its first conscious integration
into Viollet-le-Duc’s writings, the surrogate father figure being transposed to
the Middle Ages. The fascinating and far-reaching identification of Delécluze
with feudality brings up the following question: if within the three estates of
medieval society his uncle Delécluze plays the part of the feudal lord in his
dungeon (as Delécluze’s attic apartment was indeed called within the family),
can we identify other family figures to stand for the king and the priest?
In other words, can we transpose the struggle between the three estates in
medieval history into a family scene, as we have done with the Notre-Dame
episode?
The answer comes easily in the case of the king: in the passage where
the “harsh mentor” is mentioned, Viollet-le-Duc makes an explicit analogy
between monarchic power and the benevolent “paternal hand.” Besides, the
association of king with father figure is an obvious one. It has special resonance
in Viollet-le-Duc’s case since his father was employed all his life (and, for a
long period, lived) at the royal court, first during the Restoration, and then
as Conservateur des résidences royales under the July Monarchy. He took up
lodgings at the Tuileries, a move, as we have seen, that marked the initial stage
of growing dissensions in the family household, conflict that manifested itself
in a devastating way at the death of Viollet-le-Duc’s mother in 1832. Violletle-Duc then underwent a major change of heart, shifting his allegiance within
the family from his uncle to his father, a change that Delécluze described as
“the effect of a cerebral convulsion.” The soft-spoken and reserved manners
of the father, long seen as weaknesses, were now perceived by Viollet-le-Duc
as signs of a steadfast personality of great moral power, qualities he generally
associated with the French monarchy: “something impartial and great,
reserved and logical in the direction of human affairs.”77
The change Viollet-le-Duc underwent resembles the process of
emancipation in the Middle Ages that he describes. When he writes that “if
the French provinces had gone from the monastic influence to the control of
an absolute monarchic regime, they would certainly have enjoyed a happier
and more peaceful youth, their reunion under the latter power would have
been achieved without any violent trauma; but would they have felt that
294 architecture and the historical imagination
burning desire for national unity which today constitutes our strength and
every day tends to increase?” Viollet-le-Duc is conducting nothing less
than self-analysis: had Delécluze not been there to mediate his access to
his mother, would his “besoin ardent d’union” ever have led to his epiphanic
historical phantasm? The above passage cues us that Viollet-le-Duc associated
the monastic world with the mother figure. Monasteries in the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture are underscored as the refuge for delicate sensibilities.
For example, in volume one: “it is under the protection of cloister walls that
elevated, delicate and thoughtful spirits found refuge.”78 Under the article on
“Cloître,” in a rare instance of observations of a more metaphysical nature, he
quotes Guillaume Durand: “within the house of my Father, there are many
‘dwelling places’ [demeures], says our Lord.” And: “the cloister represents the
place of contemplation in which the soul withdraws within itself, and where
it hides after having turned away from the crowd of lustful thoughts, and
where it meditates solely upon celestial goals.”79 More than the church, the
cloister is the privileged place of contemplation and devotion, a pure state
naturally associated, in Viollet-le-Duc’s mind, with his mother. Of the many
dwelling places in the house of the father, therefore, the mother / cloister is
the preferred refuge, outside of which “one finds nothing but darkness, brutal
ignorance, and monstrous abuse.”80 But that refuge could only be transitional:
the monastic state, explains Viollet-le-Duc, “was a transitory state, a sort
of temporary mission, called in order to pull society out of barbarism, but
that would lose a great portion of its importance the day [the ecclesiastical]
efforts succeed.”81 As the refuge of the monastery was transitional, the role of
Viollet-le-Duc’s mother in his upbringing could only be temporary, because
of her death in 1832, but also because of the recurrent depressive episodes she
suffered.
A passage, suitably found under the heading “Architecte,” aptly
summarizes the family dynamic that led to Viollet-le-Duc’s transformation
after 1832:
The civil spirit appears on stage for the first time with ideas of organization; it wants
to govern itself, it begins to speak of rights, of freedom: all of this is still very crude,
very hesitant; it sometimes throws itself into the hands of the clergy to fight the
nobility, sometimes it forms a league with the suzerain in order to crush his vassals.
But in the middle of these struggles, of these efforts, the city learns to know itself, to
measure its strength; it has barely finished the work of destruction when it rushes to
build a base, without knowing much about what it is doing nor what it is looking for;
but it builds a base; … it feels in the end that in order to be strong, it needs to stand
united.82
This passage could be describing the ambivalent allegiance among the three
key figures of Viollet-le-Duc’s childhood: his mother (the clergy), his uncle and
mentor Delécluze (the nobility), and his father (the suzerain). The lay people’s
hatred of the nobility (Viollet-le-Duc’s hatred of Delécluze) is the result of the
oppressive character of feudal rule (Delécluze’s perverse ascendancy over the
young Eugène), a subjection that triggers an intense desire for emancipation
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 295
understood as a “besoin ardent d’union”: the urge for motherly love. Following
our analysis in Chapter 1, we understand that Viollet-le-Duc’s predicament
had its source in a triangulated desire following René Girard’s conception:
his desire for union with his mother, is at once nurtured and frustrated by
Delécluze.
We can now end this chapter with a few revisions to our analysis of the
vignette that illustrates the title page of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture,
for we are better able to sense its darker undertow. The bearded mason in
the middle of the composition is Viollet-le-Duc himself—a rather obvious
identification. The figure is not so much involved in a rational debate with
a priest, as showing off his work and talent (and therefore his worthiness) in
order to seduce the delicate-featured monastic figure on his right (standing
for his mother). The knight is the mentor (Delécluze), overseeing the exchange
between the other two. In this image of triangulated desire, the warrior figure,
ominously seen from behind, is both guide and rival. He encourages the
mason to move toward the priest, but remains always ready to stop him.
Notes
1
Hubert Damisch, “Introduction,” Viollet-le-Duc. L’architecture raisonnée, extraits du
Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture (Paris: Hermann, 1964), 25.
2
Martin Bressani, “Opposition et équilibre: Le rationalisme organique de Violletle-Duc,” Revue de l’Art 112 (spring 1996): 28–37.
3
See Philippe Boudon and Philippe Deshayes, Le dictionnaire d’architecture. Relevés
et observations (Brussels: Mardaga, 1979), 344–345; Bruno Foucart, “Viollet-leDuc ou la passion de l’analyse,” Viollet-le-Duc, exh. cat. Galeries Nationales
du Grand Palais (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1980),
339; Françoise Boudon, “Le réel et l’imaginaire: Les figures du Dictionnaire de
l’architecture,” Revue de l’Art 58–59 (1983): 98; Barry Bergdoll, “Introduction,”
The Foundations of Architecture: Selections from the Dictionnaire raisonné, trans.
Kenneth D. Whitehead (New York: Braziller, 1990), 17–19. See also Laurent
Baridon, L’imaginaire scientifique de Viollet-le-Duc (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996),
and Aron Vinegar, “Architecture under the Knife: Viollet-le-Duc’s illustrations
for the Dictionnaire raisonné and the anatomical representation of architectural
knowledge,” Master’s thesis, McGill University, 1995. On the general topic of
the influence of the natural sciences on Viollet-le-Duc and archaeology, see my
“Science, histoire et archéologie. Sources et généalogie de la pensée organiciste
de Viollet-le-Duc,” PhD diss., Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1997, and Jean
Nayrolles, “Sciences naturelles et archéologie médiévale au XIXe siècle,” in
L’architecture, les sciences et la culture de l’histoire au XIXe siècle (Saint-Étienne:
Université de Saint-Etienne, 2001), 25–50. Also of general interest is Caroline van
Eck’s Organicism in Nineteenth-Century Architecture: An Inquiry into its Theoretical
and Philosophical Background (Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura Press, 1994).
4
See, for example, Adolphe-Napoléon Didron, “Bibliographie archéologique,”
AA 14 (1854): 147. The Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux, S. E. Monseigneur
Ferdinand Donnet, was even more explicit about Viollet-le-Duc’s method.
In a letter to Viollet-le-Duc dated April 10, 1855, he writes: “Vous n’avez pris
la plume qu’après avoir parcouru la France en rebâtissant dans vos rêves les
296 architecture and the historical imagination
tours écroulées, les voûtes abattues, restaurant les façades mutilées, relevant
les cryptes, les basiliques elles-mêmes à l’aide d’un pan de muraille, comme on
nous montre Cuvier refaisant, avec une empreinte fossile, un être antédiluvien,”
Lettre de S. E. Mgr Donnet, cardinal-archevêque de Bordeaux, adressée à Viollet-leDuc (Bordeaux: Imprimerie Bonaventure et Ducessois, 1855), 2; the letter was
originally published in the newspaper La Gironde, April 12, 1855.
5
See the article on “Profil,” Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture
français du XIe au XVIe siècle, 10 vols. (Paris: B. Bance and A. Morel, 1854–1868),
hereafter DRA, vol. 7, 522–523, or “Style,” DRA, vol. 8, 482. For Beulé, see his
Histoire de l’art grec avant Péricles (Paris: Didier et Cie., 1868), 33.
6
“Nous croyons que le moment est venu d’étudier l’art du moyen âge comme on
étudie le développement et la vie d’un être animé qui de l’enfance arrive à la
vieillesse par une suite de transformations insensibles, et sans qu’il soit possible
de dire le jour où cesse l’enfance et où commence la vieillesse,” Viollet-le-Duc,
DRA, vol. 1, vi.
7
I have elsewhere traced its complex ramifications for archaeology. See my
“Science, histoire et archéologie. Sources et généalogie de la pensée organiciste
de Viollet-le-Duc,” especially “Section C,” 357–403.
8
Eugène-Joseph Woillez, Archéologie des monuments religieux de l’ancien Beauvoisis
pendant la métamorphose romane (Paris: Derache, 1839–1849), preface, unpaged.
9
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 5, 496–497.
10
Eugène-Joseph Woillez, “De l’apparition de l’ogive dans les monuments
religieux de l’ancienne Picardie,” Mémoires de la Société des antiquaires de Picardie 9
(1848): 279–302.
11
Woillez, Archéologie des monuments religieux, 6.
12
Woillez, Archéologie des monuments religieux, 6.
13
Woillez, Archéologie des monuments religieux, 6.
14
Woillez, Archéologie des monuments religieux, 3–5.
15
Woillez, Archéologie des monuments religieux, 9.
16
Woillez, Archéologie des monuments religieux, 2.
17
“Expliquer [les monuments] en les considérant en eux-mêmes et dans leurs
relations avec la société qui les a enfantés: tel est en peu de mots le double
résultat en lequel doit se résoudre les études archéologiques sérieuses,”
Woillez, “Introduction historique,” Archéologie des monuments religieux de l’ancien
Beauvoisis pendant la métamorphose romane, 37.
18
See Nayrolles “Sciences naturelles et archéologie médiévale,” 39–41; see also his
L’invention de l’art roman à l’époque moderne (XVIIIe–XIXe siècles) (Rennes: Presses
universitaires de Rennes, 2005), 156–174.
19
Jules Quicherat, “De l’ogive et de l’architecture ogivale,” Revue archéologique,
hereafter RA, 7 (1850): 65–76; and “De l’architecture romane,” RA 8 (1851):
145–158, RA 9 (1852): 525–540; RA 10 (1853): 65–81; RA 11 (1854): 668–690.
20
Adolphe Lance, “Traité d’architecture par Léonce Reynaud,” Encyclopédie
d’Architecture, hereafter EdA, 5 (March 1853): col. 49.
21
Aimé Champollion-Figeac, “Droits et usages concernant les travaux de
construction sous la troisième race des rois de France,” RA 16 (1860): 727.
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 297
22
“Intimement liée à notre histoire, aux conquêtes intellectuelles de notre pays, à
notre caractère national dont elle reproduit les traits principaux, les tendances et
la direction,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 146.
23
“Il est comme une expansion intelligente de la pile; il prend ses fonctions
de support au sérieux,” DRA, vol. 2, 508; quoted in Hubert Damisch in “Les
‘Entretiens sur l’architecture’ ou du structuralisme au fonctionalisme,” Actes
du colloque international Viollet-le-Duc Paris 1980, ed. Pierre-Marie Auzas (Paris:
Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1980), 95.
24
“Le génie provincial perd de son originalité pour se fondre dans une seule
architecture, qui s’étend successivement sur toute la superficie de la France,”
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 150.
25
“Des monuments exotiques ne se rattachant pas aux constructions indigènes de
ces contrées,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 223.
26
“L’unité gouvernementale apparaissait, et sous son influence l’architecture se
dépouillait de ses vieilles formes, empruntés de tous côtés, pour se ranger, elle
aussi, sous les lois qui en firent un art national,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 133.
27
“Les populations urbaines voyaient dans la cathédrale (non sans raisons), un
monument national, comme une représentation matérielle de l’unité du pouvoir
vers laquelle tendaient toutes leurs espérances,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 223.
28
“La monarchie française est peut-être, à partir du XIIe siècle, la seule qui ait été
réellement nationale, qui se soit identifiée à l’esprit de la population, et c’est ce qui
a fait sa force et sa puissance croissantes,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 133–134.
29
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 151.
30
“Chose merveilleuse! l’imitation des végétaux semble elle-même suivre un ordre
conforme à celui de la nature, les exemples sont là qui parlent d’eux-mêmes.
Les bourgeons sont les premiers phénomènes sensibles de la végétation, les
bourgeons donnent naissance à des scions ou jeunes branches chargées de feuilles
ou de fleurs. Eh bien! lorsque l’architecture française, à la fin du XIIe siècle,
s’empare de la flore comme moyen de décoration, elle commence par l’imitation
des cotylédons, des bourgeons, des scions, pour arriver bientôt à la reproduction
des tiges et des feuilles développées. … Il va sans dire que cette méthode
synthétique est, à plus forte raison, suivie dans la statique, dans tous les moyens
employés par l’architecture pour résister aux éléments destructeurs,” Viollet-leDuc, DRA, vol. 1, 149.
31
“Nous restons frappés de l’organisation intérieure de ces édifices. De même
que le corps humain porte sur le sol et se meut au moyen de deux points
d’appui simples, grêles, occupant le moins d’espace possible, se complique et se
développe à mesure qu’il doit contenir un grand nombre d’organes importants;
de même l’édifice gothique pose ses points d’appui d’après les données les plus
simples, sorte de quillage dont la stabilité n’est maintenue que par la combinaison
et les développements des parties supérieures. L’édifice gothique ne reste debout
qu’à la condition d’être complet; on ne peut retrancher un de ses organes sous
peine de le voir périr, car il n’acquiert de stabilité que par les lois de l’équilibre,”
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 149.
32
“L’homme est de tous les êtres organisés le plus complet, et cette perfection
relative est si apparente, si réelle, qu’il est devenu le maître de tous ces êtres
organisés. Il est le mythe de la structure; donc; si l’on veut construire, il faut
le prendre comme modèle,” Viollet-le-Duc, Entretiens sur l’architecture, 2 vols.
(Paris: A. Morel, 1863–1872), hereafter EA, vol. 1, 82.
298 architecture and the historical imagination
33
In his early years, the zoologist and chemist Alexandre Brongniart, and, later in
life, the naturalist and geographer Charles Martins and the neuroanatomist and
anthropologist Paul Broca.
34
Étienne Delécluze to Viollet-le-Duc, September 28, 1839, MAP, “Correspondance
et rapports, 1835–47,” doc. 23.
35
Jean-Marc Bourgery, Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme comprenant la médecine
opératoire (Paris: C.-A. Delaunay, 1831), vol. 1, 20.
36
Bourgery, Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, vol. 1, 7.
37
Bourgery, Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, vol. 1, 7.
38
Bourgery, Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, vol. 1, 7.
39
Viollet-le-Duc, EA, vol. 1, 410–411.
40
“Afin de rendre facilement comparables entre elles toutes les parties de notre
travail, nous avons dû nous créer un type idéal de la forme la plus belle et du
parfait développement de l’espèce, type d’après lequel toutes les figures seraient
également représentées. Dans ce but, nous sommes convenu de décrire l’homme
de race caucasique, d’une taille de cinq pieds, âgé de trente-trois ans, et doué
des plus heureuses proportions. À son étude nous rattachons celles de l’enfant et
du vieillard: en d’autres termes, c’est toujours le même individu idéal que nous
décrivons tel qu’il a dû être, et tel qu’il serait par les progrès de l’âge. La femme,
qui n’est que l’homme modifié pour l’accomplissement de certaines fonctions,
doit être décrite en même temps pour chacune des parties de son organisation
qui offre des dissemblances,” Bourgery, Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme,
vol. 1, 3.
41
Bourgery, Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, vol. 1, 26.
42
Eric Voegelin, History of the Race Idea from Ray to Carus, vol. 3, The Collected Works
of Eric Voegelin, 34 vols. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998),
10.
43
Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris:
Gallimard, 1966), 329–333.
44
“Sans un instinct vif les facultés les plus nobles restent sans emploi. … L’Instinct
… possède l’homme et le pousse à agir. Lui seul est original,” Bourgery, Traité
complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, vol. 3, 16.
45
“C’est de cette personnalité spirituelle, transmissible dans la race, que résultent,
par le travail collectif des générations, toutes les grandes manifestations de
l’esprit.” Bourgery, Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, vol. 3, 18.
46
“Dans toutes les applications de l’esprit au monde extérieur, l’organisme ne fait
que se copier, en quelque sorte se traduire lui-même et s’imposer à la nature.
… l’homme précisément n’invente rien, car il n’imagine que ce qu’il sent en lui,
appliquant au-dehors ce qu’il est ou a été fait lui-même au-dedans,” Bourgery,
Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, vol. 3, 24.
47
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 2, 324.
48
See Peter Kurmann, “Viollet-le-Duc und die Vorstellung einer idealen
Kathedrale,” in Oechslin, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (Zurich: GTA Verlag
and Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2010), 32–50.
49
Léonce Reynaud, “Architecture,” in Encyclopédie nouvelle, Jean Reynaud and
Pierre Leroux, eds., 3 vols. (Paris: Gosselin, 1836), vol. 1, 772.
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 299
50
Léonce Reynaud, Traité d’architecture contenant des notions générales sur les
principes de construction et l’histoire de l’art, 2 vols. (Paris: Carillan-Goeury et V.
Dalmont, 1850–1858), vol. 2, 287.
51
Bergdoll, “Introduction,” The Foundations of Architecture, 20.
52
Jean-Michel Leniaud, Viollet-le-Duc ou les délires du système (Paris: Menges,
1994), 69.
53
“Afin de donner une idée de ce que devait être une cathédrale du XIIIe siècle,
complète, achevée telle qu’elle avait été conçue, nous reproduisons une vue
cavalière d’un édifice de cette époque, exécutée d’après le type adopté à Reims.
Faisant bon marché des détails, auxquels nous n’attachons pas ici d’importance,
on peut admettre que le monument projetée par Robert de Coucy devait
représenter cet ensemble, si ce n’est que les flèches occidentales ne furent jamais
terminées et que les flèches centrale et des transepts étaient de bois et de plomb.
Le 24 juillet 1481, des ouvriers plombiers, dont les noms nous sont restés (Jean
et Remi Legoix) mirent le feu à la toiture par négligence. L’incendie dévora
toutes les charpentes. … On ne put songer à rétablir le monument dans l’état où
il était avant l’incendie. … On dut se borner à refaire la charpente, les galeries
supérieures, les pignons, à réparer les tours du portail et à raser les quatre tours
des transepts au niveau du grand comble. C’est dans cet état que nous trouvons
aujourd’hui ce monument, si splendide malgré les mutilations qu’il a subies,”
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 2, 323.
54
See Kurmann, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, passim; see also Alain Villes, La
cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims. Chronologie et campagne de travaux (Sens: Alain
Villes and Jouè-les-Tours: La Simarre, 2009), 25–39.
55
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 4, 417 and vol. 5, 434.
56
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 3, 286.
57
“Si le sentiment religieux faisait bâtir des églises, le sentiment de la richesse ou
de la puissance érigeait les clochers,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 3, 382.
58
“Le clocher … est l’expression la plus sensible de la civilisation … de cette
époque: c’est, pour tout dire en un mot, … le véritable monument national,”
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 3, 366.
59
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 5, 444; see also DRA, vol. 5, 426.
60
Viollet-le-Duc, L’art russe; ses origines, ses éléments constitutifs, son apogée, son
avenir (Paris: A. Morel et Cie., 1877), 67.
61
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 208.
62
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 2, 330.
63
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 71.
64
“Surabondance de force et d’imagination,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 2, 339.
65
“Tout ce qui surgit à cette époque est irrésistible,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1,
132.
66
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 123–125.
67
John Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin, Edgar Thomas Cook and Alexander
Wedderburn eds., 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), vol. 3, 665–666;
quoted in Tim Hilton, John Ruskin: The Early Years (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 2000), 70.
300 architecture and the historical imagination
68
“L’alphabet est euphorique: fini l’angoisse du ‘plan’, l’emphase du
‘développement’, les logiques tordues, fini les dissertations! Une idée par
fragment, un fragment par idée,” Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes par Roland
Barthes (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975), 150; I have used the English edition,
Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill &
Wang, 1977), 147.
69
For Freud’s first and more sober description of the phenomenon of repetition (as
opposed to its more ambitious elaboration in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”),
see “Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through” (1914), in The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmond Freud, trans. under the
general editorship of James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1962),
vol. 3, 47–156.
70
See, in particular, Robert Rogers, “Freud and the Semiotics of Repetition,”
Poetics Today 8, nos. 3–4 (1987): 579–590.
71
Rogers, “Freud and the Semiotics of Repetition,” 584.
72
That crucial passage of the article on “Château” is strangely absent from the
manuscript in the Archives départementales de l’Oise: pages 112–130 (or
144–177 of the published version) are missing; see manuscript 64 J 3 of the
“Fonds Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.” The passage may have been a late
modification of “Château.”
73
“À la fin du XIIe siècle, l’esprit monastique était déjà sur son déclin; il avait
rempli sa tâche. Alors l’élément laïc s’était développé dans les villes populeuses;
les évêques et les rois lui offrirent, à leur tour, un point de ralliement en
bâtissant les grandes cathédrales. Autre danger: il y avait à craindre que la
puissance royale, secondées par les évêques, ne soumit cette société à un
gouvernement théocratique, immobile comme les anciens gouvernements de
l’Égypte. C’est alors que la féodalité prend un rôle politique, peut-être à son
insu. … Elle se jette entre la royauté et l’influence cléricale, empêchant ces deux
pouvoirs de se confondre en un seul, mettant le poids de ses armes tantôt dans
l’un des plateaux de la balance, tantôt dans l’autre. Elle opprime le peuple, mais
elle le force de vivre; elle le réveille, elle le frappe ou le seconde, mais l’oblige
ainsi à se reconnaître, à se réunir, à défendre ses droits, à les discuter, à en
appeler même à la force; en lui donnant l’habitude de recourir aux tribunaux
royaux, elle jette le tiers état dans l’étude de la jurisprudence; par ses excès
mêmes, elle provoque l’indignation de l’opprimé contre l’oppresseur. L’envie
que causent ses privilèges devient un stimulant énergique, un ferment de haine
salutaire, car il empêche les classes inférieures d’oublier un instant leur position
précaire, et les force à tenter chaque jour de s’en affranchir. Mieux encore, par
ses luttes et ses défiances, la féodalité entretient et aiguise l’esprit militaire
dans le pays, car elle ne connaît que la puissance des armes; elle enseigne aux
populations urbaines l’art de la fortification; elle les oblige à se garder; elle
conserve d’ailleurs certains principes d’honneur chevaleresque que rien ne peut
effacer,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 3, 147.
74
“Il en est de l’éducation des peuples comme de celle des individus, qui,
lorsqu’ils sont doués d’un tempérament robuste, apprennent mieux la vie sous
les régents fantasques, durs et injustes même, que sous la main indulgente
et paternelle de la famille. … Si les provinces françaises avaient passé sous
l’influence monastique sous un régime monarchique absolu, elles eussent eu
certainement une jeunesse plus heureuse et tranquille, leur agglomération
sous ce dernier pouvoir eût pu se faire sans secousses violentes; mais auraientelles éprouvé ce besoin ardent d’union, d’unité nationale qui fait notre force
physiology of the ancient architecture of france 301
aujourd’hui et qui tend tous les jours à s’accroître? C’est douteux. La féodalité
avait d’ailleurs un avantage immense chez un peuple qui se développait:
elle entretenait le sentiment de la responsabilité personnelle, que le pouvoir
monarchique absolu tend au contraire à éteindre; elle habituait chaque individu
à la lutte: c’était un régime dur, oppressif, vexatoire, mais sain. Il secondait le
pouvoir royal en forçant les populations à s’unir contre les châtelains divisés, à
former un corps de nation. … La féodalité était un rude berceau; mais la nation
qui y passa son enfance et put résister à ce dur apprentissage de la vie politique,
sans périr, devait acquérir une vigueur qui lui a permis de sortir des plus
grands périls sans être épuisée. Respectons ces ruines, si longtemps maudites,
maintenant qu’elles sont silencieuses et rongées par le temps et les révolutions;
regardons-les, non comme des restes de l’oppression et de la barbarie, mais bien
comme nous regardons la maison, désormais vide, où nous avons appris, sous
un recteur dur et fantasque, à connaître la vie et à devenir des hommes” Violletle-Duc, DRA, vol. 3, 147–148, 191.
75
A few elements allow us to date this passage from vol. 3 of the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture with a fair degree of precision. According to the
Bibliographie de la France, vol. 2 was completed in March 1856, vol. 3 in May
1858. The latter volume was thus written between these dates. We know that
the long article on “Château,” contained in the first part of the volume, was at
least partly written during the year 1858, since a reference to that date is made
in a footnote on page 161. We must assume, however, that Viollet-le-Duc had
written this passage quite early in 1858, since the whole of vol. 3 was completed
by May of that year and the footnote just mentioned appears in one of the early
installments of that volume (which comprises 513 pages). After “Château,”
Viollet-le-Duc still had to write the important articles “Clocher” and “Cloître,”
and 31 others. Given the great length of “Château,” it is fair to assume that it
was written between late 1857 and the first month of 1858. But judging from the
manuscript held in the Archives départementales de l’Oise, it is highly probable
that “Château” was revised. See n. 72 above.
Pierre-Marie Auzas, in his otherwise very reliable and useful Eugène Viollet-leDuc 1814–1879 (Paris: Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites,
1965), which was republished with some minor corrections in 1979, claimed
that “Château” was drafted in the early part of 1856 (see p. 91 of the 1979 ed.).
Given that the second volume was completed around March of that year and
taking into consideration the fact that Viollet-le-Duc had to write the long
article “Charpente” before getting to the 133-page “Château,” Auzas’s dating is
doubtful. If we add the fact that “Château” refers to events taking place in 1858,
we can safely assert that it is wrong. The confusion comes from the transcription
of a letter from Viollet-le-Duc to the Bordeaux architect Gustave Alaux, dated
December 9, 1856, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1855–59,” doc. 139, in
which he writes “j’ai fini le mot ‘clocher’, je commence ‘cloître’ et vais arriver
sous peu à construction.” The date of the letter has obviously been wrongly
transcribed by Viollet-le-Duc’s son. The letter may have indicated only the day
and month, as was often the case, leaving Viollet-le-Duc’s son to guess the year.
However, I must admit that neither December 1857 nor December 1858 would
make sense. The letter to Alaux is nonetheless an interesting document for
confirming the fact that Viollet-le-Duc was writing one article after the other in
alphabetical order.
76
“À [l]a mort [de mon père] j’ai retrouvé une malle [ou une masse] énorme [de
lettres de famille], depuis l’époque de la révolution du dernier siècle jusqu’à
présent. Cette lecture est curieuse. Je n’ai pu m’en détacher. … Il m’est resté de
302 architecture and the historical imagination
cette revue une profonde tristesse, que de soins, de passions, d’inquiétudes,
de prédictions, de protestations, de menaces, de témoignages d’affection, et
tout cela pour arriver à l’oubli, à l’indifférence, à la négation. Dans l’espace
de quelques années, des protestations d’amitié se changent en brouillerie, à
propos de niaiseries,” Viollet-le-Duc, reflection dated August 9, 1857, MAP,
“Correspondance et rapports, 1855–59,” doc. 150.
77
“Quelque chose d’impartial et de grand, de contenu et de logique dans la
direction des affaires … distingue [la] monarchie [française] entre toutes dans
l’histoire des peuples de l’Europe occidentale,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 133.
78
“C’est à l’abri des murs du cloître que viennent se réfugier les esprits élevés,
délicats, réfléchis,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 122.
79
“Dans la maison de mon Père, il y a beaucoup de ‘demeures’, dit le Seigneur.”
Et, dans le sens moral, “le cloître représente la contemplation dans laquelle l’âme
se replie sur elle-même, et où elle se cache après avoir s’être séparée de la foule
des pensées charnelles, et où elle médite les seuls biens célestes,” Viollet-le-Duc,
DRA, vol. 3, 409.
80
“Car rayer Cluny du XIe siècle, et l’on ne trouve plus guère que ténèbres,
ignorance grossière, abus monstrueux,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 108.
81
“L’état monastique … était un état transitoire, une sorte de mission temporaire,
appelée à tirer la société de la barbarie, mais qui devait perdre une grande partie
de son importance du jour que le succès viendrait couronner leurs efforts,”
Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 280.
82
“L’esprit civil apparaît pour la première fois sur la scène avec des idées
d’organisation; il veut se gouverner lui-même, il commence à parler de droits,
de libertés: tout cela est fort grossier, fort incertain; il se jette tantôt dans les bras
du clergé pour lutter contre la noblesse, tantôt il se ligue avec le suzerain pour
écraser ses vassaux. Mais au milieu de ces luttes, de ces efforts, la cité apprend
à se connaître, à mesurer ses forces; elle n’a pas plutôt détruit qu’elle se presse
de fonder, sans trop savoir ce qu’elle fait ni ce qu’elle veut; … elle sent enfin que
pour être forts, il faut se tenir unis,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRA, vol. 1, 108.
Part IV
The Gothic as Will
9.1 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Imperial Academy of Music. Opera Project [Paris]. Perspective View.
1860–1861. Ink, wash and watercolour. 65.0 × 91.3 cm. MAP. © Philippe Berthé—Centre
des monuments nationaux. Inscription at top left reads Aedificare diu cogitare oportet.
9
War rue Bonaparte: 1856–1864
Omnipotence
The late 1850s and early 1860s mark a summit in Viollet-le-Duc’s career.
During that period, he was simultaneously carrying out the restorations
of Notre-Dame de Paris, the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, the Basilica of
Saint-Nazaire and Saint-Celse and the fortifications at Carcassonne, the
Basilica of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse, Amiens Cathedral, the Palais Synodal
in Sens, Reims Cathedral, the Château and fortress at Pierrefonds, and
Clermont-Ferrand Cathedral. If in 1861 he dared to maneuver himself into
position in order to capture the commission for the Paris Opéra, which was
virtually targeted for him by the emperor,1 his supremacy within the French
architectural world would have been incontestable (Fig. 9.1). Even without
the Paris Opéra commission, Viollet-le-Duc was impressively prominent. His
architectural practice, in volume alone, ranked among the highest. If we add
up the approximate budgets of his restoration works still in progress during
the late 1850s, he was probably responsible for more government spending
than most architects: Notre-Dame (12,000,000F), Pierrefonds (5,000,000F),
Saint-Denis (2,500,000F), Amiens (1,894,000F), Carcassone (800,000F),
Vézelay (837,000F, completed in 18592). Only Hector Lefuel, Léon Vaudoyer,
and soon Charles Garnier, who handled, respectively, the colossal projects of
the Louvre (25,000,000F), Marseilles Cathedral (21,000,000F), and the Opéra
(whose costs will eventually add up to the delirious sum of 36,000,000F),
outpaced him. And we must not forget that Viollet-le-Duc also kept an
extensive domestic practice until 1870, no less than two or three houses in
Paris and two or three large country houses every year, if his own claims are
to be trusted.3 There is no record of the greater portion of these residential
projects, but judging from the ones we know, Viollet-le-Duc was quite
good at catering to the whims of private clients, especially when designing
country chateaux. He was, after all, the architect of the most eccentric of
all: the chateau at Pierrefonds. But when the occasion presented itself, he
would design houses that were of a remarkably bold simplicity, such as the
hunting lodge at Creil (Fig. 9.2).
306 architecture and the historical imagination
9.2 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Country
House. Hunting
lodge near Creil
(Oise). Undated.
Steel engraving
by Claude
Sauvageot. Pl.
158 from Violletle-Duc and
Félix Narjoux,
Habitations
modernes,
1875–1877.
Private collection
Comparing the volume of commissions and their budget figures is
interesting as it provides a quick gauge of an architect’s level of activities.
But number and size are, of course, not always the most reliable measures
of influence. Though the new Louvre would certainly provide an important
model for French (and foreign) institutional buildings, we can hardly count
Hector-Martin Lefuel among the determinant voices in architectural debates of
mid-nineteenth-century France. In contrast, Henri Labrouste, whose practice
was negligible until 1856, was a key pillar of the architectural scene, thanks to
the popularity and influence of his Beaux-Arts atelier and the publicity that
his Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève received (even if its budget did not reach
1.5 million francs).
Viollet-le-Duc was uniquely positioned: he had both an extensive practice
and authority. Even if his built work comprised mainly restorations, his
numerous publications ensured that these could be conceived as ammunition
in debates about an architecture appropriate for the nineteenth century. His
very popular books (Anatole de Baudot mentions that students in Labrouste’s
atelier were desperate to get hold of the latest installments of the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture),4 his ramified influence on the architectural press, and
his control of government architectural services overseeing the restoration of
churches and historical monuments gave him formidable reach. If we add the
fact that once he began the restoration of Pierrefonds in 1858, he held regular
meetings with Napoleon III, his level of influence during the height of the
Second Empire was probably unmatched. In 1858, he was elevated to the rank
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 307
of Officier of the Légion d’honneur (having been Chevalier since 1849), which
prompted Delécluze to write him one last letter.5 During the same period,
Viollet-le-Duc was made an honorary member of a great number of foreign
institutes and academies, starting with the Royal Institute of British Architects
(RIBA) in 1855. In March 1864, a few days before he resigned from his teaching
position at the École des Beaux-Arts following the fiasco of his attempted
reform, he was awarded the RIBA’s prestigious gold medal. In November
1864, a certain Mr. Berger (a painter?) wrote to Viollet-le-Duc to compliment
him on having created “a new national school of architecture appropriate to
the nineteenth century,” in the same way that “Géricault, Eugène Delacroix
have done for painting and David d’Angers for sculpture.” By the late 1850s,
Viollet-le-Duc had indeed synthesized a whole school in his own person.
One means for the staging of Viollet-le-Duc’s special authority at the height
of the Second Empire was the house he designed for himself in 1862. Buying
a lot on the rue de Laval prolongée (later renamed rue Condorcet) in January
that year, he built over the next two years a four-story apartment house,
keeping the third floor for his own use. When Delécluze passed away the
following year, Viollet-le-Duc sold the old family house on rue Chabanais,
which he had inherited from his uncle, paying off the mortgage for his new
house with the proceeds of the sale.6 It is difficult to know the precise family
circumstances that led to his decision, but it is
significant that he liquidated the family estate
and invested in a speculative venture in a
newly developed quarter of the city.7 Ridding
himself of family ghosts did not, however,
mean that Viollet-le-Duc had given up the
aura of the past: he would build for himself an
ersatz ancestral house.
The house on rue Condorcet is indeed
modeled upon the type-form of the medieval
urban house as illustrated in the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture: a straightforward
wall structure with punched windows and
a set of arcuated masonry openings for
commerce on the ground floor (in lieu of the
typical continuously glazed facade) (Fig. 9.3).
Behind that discreet medievalizing screen,
Viollet-le-Duc elaborated a plan respecting all
conventions of Parisian apartment living, with
a special concern for daylight and for the clear
demarcation of reception rooms from private
quarters. On the third floor, he imposed a slight
variant on the typical floor plan with greater
floor to ceiling height (3.6 meters). He merged
the grand and petit salons to form a single room
9.3 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Apartment
Building in
Paris. Steel
engraving by
E. Maurage. Pl.
63 from Violletle-Duc and
Félix Narjoux,
Habitations
modernes,
1875–1877.
Private collection.
Viollet-le-Duc’s
own house at 68,
rue de Condorcet,
Paris, built in
1862–1863.
308 architecture and the historical imagination
9.4 AdolpheVictor GeoffroyDechaume. E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc in
his Study. Basrelief adorning
the base of
Viollet-le-Duc’s
bust by the same
sculptor. 1882.
Plaster. 43.0 ×
32.0 × 5.0 cm. ©
Fonds GeoffroyDechaume /
Musée des
monuments
français / Cité de
l’architecture et
du patrimoine,
Paris
spanning the whole 11-meter depth of the
building with exceptionally wide window
openings. That space was to form Viollet-leDuc’s legendary atelier, with its walls lined
from floor to ceiling with the architect’s vast
and precious collection of books. According
to Paul Gout, the room was fitted with an odd
assortment of wood and cast-iron furniture on
which books, drawings, maps, and instruments
piled up. Suffused with a soft and solemn
light, it “appeared,” summarized Gout, “as the
cabinet of some old scientist of a bygone age.”8
The library–studio thus acquired a “historical”
depth, no doubt conceived by the architect as
the revival of the grande salle, which he thought
was characteristic of the traditional medieval
house. In his alchemist’s cell, Viollet-le-Duc
himself donned a historical costume in the
form of a blue cotton robe (a lévite) tied at the
waist, and a black silk cap with Raphaelesque
horns (Fig. 9.4). The house was his special
refuge. In a letter to his wife dated a few years after the completion of his
house on the rue Condorcet, Viollet-le-Duc speaks of his need for protection:
Everything is well-kept here [on rue Condorcet], we have a concierge who is a
masterpiece, but then it is the commander of the fortress of Paris, my friend the
General Soumain, who has given him to me [qui me l’a donné]. The house gleams; one
would search in vain for a single speck of dust. It is a great comfort. Calm, silence,
cleanliness, order, no useless words, great regularity; if, together with this, one’s
mind is not too tormented, one may live decently.9
The dwelling was a stronghold, protected from intruders by a concierge who
was also a guard.10 All that calm, silence, and cleanliness, however, were not
turned against the world of work: it was the “regularized” environment for
his tireless labors, architectural and scholarly. Viollet-le-Duc’s very strict
daily habits have been described many times. He entered his atelier at seven
o’clock sharp each morning, organizing or producing the documents for the
day’s work. Between nine o’clock and ten o’clock, he received visitors wishing
to consult with him: any visitor—architects, builders, artists, publishers,
craftsmen—would be directly admitted to the atelier, each waiting in turn
to speak to the master. He would treat everyone with equal courtesy and
seriousness, speaking in a low, yet clear and precise voice. At precisely ten
o’clock, the door would be closed shut. After a very frugal meal, he would
work without interruption until five o’clock in the afternoon in solitude,
only the presence of his cat being tolerated (Fig. 9.5). The early evening was
devoted to visits and various errands, but he was always back in his atelier
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 309
at eight o’clock, working on his more scholarly studies until midnight. If he
couldn’t complete a task within the prescribed time, he would move to the
next, and would take up the former again the next day. When he was required
to travel, it was always at night, in order to save time. According to Violletle-Duc himself, such “mathematical regularity” was the only way he could
succeed in dealing with the ceaseless accumulation of work.11
The decor—a hybrid mixture of modern elements (simple cast iron
furniture, oversize windows) and an accumulation of curiosities and books—
was idiosyncratic yet the perfect reflection of the personality and work of
the owner. Viollet-le-Duc was emphatic about the “caractère individuel” of
medieval dwellings.12 Each habitation, he claimed, bore the mark of its specific
owner, reflecting a healthy individualism: “True civilization, … the fertile and
active one, is where the citizen keeps the plenitude of his individuality.”13
We can track this individualized conception through detailed elements
of the house on rue Condorcet, in the way, for example, that he furnished
his atelier with odd contraptions, especially designed by him for all sorts of
particular uses. They were in fact instruments fitted exactly for the performance
of Viollet-le-Duc’s various writing tasks and drawing procedures—including
his activity of drawing on woodblocks. Even his curious historical dress may
be conceived in terms of performance. In the third and fourth volumes of
the Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier devoted to medieval clothing (1872–1873),
Viollet-le-Duc insisted upon the intimate relationship between dress and
body. Under the heading “Robe,” he spoke of his interest in a “physiology of
9.5 E.-E. Violletle-Duc. Viollet-leDuc’s cat playing
with toy soldiers.
Ink. 9.7 × 12.0 cm.
MAP. © Ministère
de la Culture /
Médiathèque
du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMNGrand Palais /
Art Resource,
NY. Inscription
below reads:
The situation is
at its most tense.
310 architecture and the historical imagination
clothing”: “an item of clothing worn daily cannot avoid exercising an influence
upon one’s body [une influence sur le physique].”14 He specifically described
the discipline required for wearing the type of long garment he himself
wore in his atelier: “The wearing of long robes made of supple material with
narrow pleats, as were worn in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, demanded
a complete education, taking the habits right from childhood of certain
movements and gestures which are in harmony with this sort of clothing
[qui s’alliaient avec cet habillement].”15 Wearing such robes in his study, Violletle-Duc was thus better able to “embody” the medieval age with which he
identified, and the ascetic lifestyle he had established for himself. Paul Gout
described his gestures: “When he spoke, always in a low voice, with a calm,
simple but grand air, he would, from time to time, draw his small hat over his
forehead, or pull over his knees the tails of his legendary robe.”16 This subtle
pantomime was the quintessential expression of Viollet-le-Duc’s authority, as
if coming from another age.
It was during the late 1850s that Viollet-le-Duc’s desire for control seemed
to have reached a new level. This was a crucial juncture, not only with the
death of his father on July 12, 1857, but also, only a few days later, the death of
his lifelong business partner Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus. Becoming the sole
architect of Notre-Dame de Paris, Viollet-le-Duc must have experienced a new
level of autonomy. Together with his increased influence within the arenas
of power, this new status seems to have stimulated a broader grasp of world
events. Significantly, he began jotting down private thoughts in late 1856, in
an effort to grasp the nature of change and agency in both the natural and the
social spheres.17 For example, on July 16, 1857, a day after Lassus’s death and
only four days after his father’s, Viollet-le-Duc contemplates the changes in
the European world order:
The remains of the old world are falling apart, and I see only money rising from the
impending ruins of the old prejudices. What idea will save us? Is there an idea or a
principle applicable at the moment of the final collapse? … I don’t know where we
are going, but we are going somewhere at an accelerated pace. All the governments
of Europe rest upon the point of a needle. War is defunct, the people no longer
understand it, and could not fight with passion. … Money! It is the sole motive, the
sole power left standing. But no force is more mobile, it consists merely of brutal
possession, just like the power of the sword, and rests neither upon a principle nor
an idea.18
In February 1858, he reflects: “Is egoism necessarily the end point of human
perfectibility?”19 In the classic manner of Prosper Mérimée, however, Violletle-Duc will come to conceive of “egoism” as itself a primordial principle. All
through the 1860s and 1870s, he will seek to understand that principle by way of
analogies with the raw formative powers of nature. In the field of architecture,
the Entretiens sur l’architecture—whose first three installments appeared
simultaneously in January 1858—will be the vehicle for his first articulation of
the idea of style, which he associates with a celebration of nature’s generative
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 311
power or “puissance génératrice.” Viollet-le-Duc’s fascination with nature’s
productive vitality parallels his attraction to power within the human world.
In a short autobiographical reflection from October 1861, he confesses:
X lives, he comes in contact with men in high places [les grands], he is attracted to
them, not for his personal interest, … but because of their greatness, instinctively
assuming that their situation of power is commensurate with the elevation of their
intelligence and heart. Too often, X finds that the greats are in fact small. Their
weaknesses seem inconceivable; he suffers for them as if for himself. … But going
back is impossible for him; if the greats seem small, the small people are in his eyes
even smaller.20
Power being an expression of vitality, it provides a relative measure of
greatness. “Only those carried away by passion reach superiority,”21 writes
Viollet-le-Duc in 1858. It is a similar notion that pushed him to believe that
success in warfare is the gauge of a nation’s health. His attempt to reform the
École des Beaux-Arts, a crusade that lasted from 1856 to 1864, was conceived
according to the same sort of ethic. The École was ailing, and Viollet-le-Duc
would be the agent of its regeneration. According to Maxime Du Camp,
Viollet-le-Duc once admitted that his true ambition was to become the “grand
recteur des Beaux-Arts en France,” a confession, adds Du Camp, “that I did not
dream up, since he said it in front of me.”22 Du Camp is not always the most
reliable witness, but, in this case, his comment rings true. In the late 1850s
and 1860s, Viollet-le-Duc sought to expand his power beyond patrimonial
institutions to reach into the very heart of the French artistic world—the
École des Beaux-Arts. Such aspiration was fueled by Viollet-le-Duc’s hatred
of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The obsessive character of that hostility
points to a fantasy of omnipotence. On the one hand, he elaborates a new
discourse about the artist’s need to appropriate the basic productive forces
of the universe, a fundamental aspect of his theory of creativity from the
late 1850s; on the other hand, he holds to the delusion of being controlled,
intruded upon, and persecuted by an all-powerful agent (the Académie). It is
the same triangulation of desire that led to the double bind in his childhood.
His whole language is therefore appropriately couched in organic terms:
a process of rejuvenation must occur so that the École des Beaux-Arts can
regain its “natural” healthy state. The first condition is to abolish the artificial
and constraining regime of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the same harsh and
capricious rule that he had known under Delécluze’s apprenticeship when
growing up. In a long letter to Adolphe Lance, published in January 1856 in
the Encyclopédie d’architecture and notable for being his first systematic critique
of the École des Beaux-Arts, Viollet-le-Duc accuses the venerable institution
of suffering from “sterility” at a moment when “architecture in France has
reached … one of its periods of germination.”23
Whatever personal investment Viollet-le-Duc may have had in criticizing
the École and the Académie, his quest for reforming these institutions was
also part of a much larger movement. There was nothing uncommon about
312 architecture and the historical imagination
criticizing the Académie’s grip on the École, save for Viollet-le-Duc’s obsessing
over it. Such complaint had been a leitmotif in Romantic circles since the first
years of the Restoration. “Every ten or fifteen years,” wrote Viollet-le-Duc
in 1878, “the question of the reorganization of the Beaux-Arts resurfaces.”24
But as Alain Bonnet’s monograph on the 1863–1864 reform demonstrates,
criticism of the Académie’s hegemony in artistic matters took a more serious
turn after the advent of the Second Empire.25 What prompted Viollet-le-Duc
to write against the École in January 1856, for instance, was a speech made
the month before by Ministre d’État Achille Fould at the award ceremony at
the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Among other things, the Ministre expressed his
dismay over the fact that the architectural works exhibited at the international
Paris exposition of 1855 consisted only of restoration projects of classical or
medieval monuments. Fould forcefully pointed out that “the phenomenal
expansion of commerce and industry seems to invite architects to produce
projects of all kinds. … The Beaux-Arts cannot stay behind in the midst of the
ceaseless movement within our national production.”26 The Second Empire
will increasingly favor an artistic policy based on an economic and commercial
model, whereby artists should participate in the competition among nations
just as industrialists and merchants would. The decision made by the Empress
Eugénie to reunite artistic and industrial products at the 1855 Paris exposition,
in contrast to the 1851 London show, was a clear sign that a new relationship
between art and industry was sought by the imperial regime. Viollet-le-Duc
similarly conceived the liberation of the École from the constraining yoke of
the Académie as opening the way to a healthy competition.
Artistic matters aside, the Second Empire did not endear itself to the
Institut de France as a whole, considering its autonomy and privileges an
anomaly vis à vis their authoritarian policy. The venerable institution on Quai
de Conti indeed enjoyed an unusual amount of freedom and had become
a refuge for the opposition. It counted among its members a majority of
Orléanists, legitimists, and supporters of the Catholic Church.27 The Institut
almost systematically refused to elect members from the government to its
five academies. Hippolyte Fortoul, Ministre de l’Intérieur, was turned down
twice at the Académie des Inscriptions despite the support of Mérimée, whose
skill at maneuvering was unmatched. He was finally elected in February
1855, but decided, despite that vindication, to organize a major reform of the
Institut the same year in order to “non-violently subdue the Institut’s hostility
[toward the government].”28 According to a decree issued on April 14, 1855,
the government would take control of the scheduling of all Institut meetings,
its staff appointments, and most crucially, the judging of academic prizes.
This reshuffling caused the Académie des Beaux-Arts to lose control of the
judging of the prestigious Prix de Rome. Fortoul’s decree, however, was never
put into effect: the Institut reacted quickly, and in view of Napoleon III’s
hesitation, the government backed down. The whole affair was barely noted
in the press. But Fould’s speech at the École des Beaux-Arts in December 1855
could be understood as a means to keep alive the spirit of a decree that sought
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 313
to tie artistic matters to government policy. Of the five academies of the
Institut,29 the Académie des Beaux-Arts was probably the most vulnerable,
the privileged example in popular opinion of the Institut’s rearguard attitude.
Journalist and playwright Henri Rochefort ridiculed the Académie in 1864
in the satirical newspaper Le Nain jaune: “Every day,” he wrote, “you [the
Académie des Beaux-Arts] are blamed for our artistic and literary decadence.
You only need to reject a man for him to become famous. Very often, you only
need to welcome one in your midst, for him to become ridiculous”30—harsh
words that must be regarded in the context of the raging battle against the
Académie des Beaux-Arts, which had reached its zenith in 1864.
At the Beaux-Arts in 1857
Before getting to the story of Viollet-le-Duc’s 1863 coup, we must describe
his more modest assault of 1856–1857. The occasion was provided by ÉmileJacques Gilbert aîné and Henri Labrouste’s mutual decision in the spring of
1856 to close their respective ateliers after decades of teaching at the École des
Beaux-Arts. Their very popular architectural studios were renown for their
progressive stance: they were the only ones, along with that of Simon-Claude
Constant-Dufeux, to take academic orthodoxy to task. The closing of their
ateliers was thus considered of great consequence and was widely publicized
in the professional architectural press. The case of Labrouste was particularly
newsworthy as he was the symbolic head of the progressive school. Léon
de Laborde went so far as to claim that for architecture, Labrouste’s atelier
was the “only serious resource for the school, for Paris, and for France.”31
Labrouste solemnly presented a farewell address to his students at a dinner
on the evening of June 18, 1856, and on June 30, he officially closed his atelier.32
The question of Labrouste’s succession caused somewhat of a stir.
Officially, the newly opened ateliers of Charles-Auguste Questel and LouisJules André replaced Gilbert and Labrouste’s, respectively. In the polemical
inaugural lecture for his course on Greek architecture at the Bibliothèque
impériale, Charles-Ernest Beulé could not resist pointing out that Labrouste
had chosen a Grand Prix de Rome recipient as his successor. For Beulé, it
was a tacit admission on Labrouste’s part that his radical teaching methods
were not viable: “After twenty years, a prominent teacher who necessarily
counted among his many hundreds of students men of true merit, could
not find a disciple to continue his teaching, and had to go to the Académie
de [France in] Rome to find his successor. Noble caution, gentleman, for
future extremists.”33 Labrouste’s students were quick to respond. Edmond
Bailly, probably the disciple closest to Labrouste, inserted a brief notice in
the Revue générale titled “M. H. Labrouste et M. E. Beulé. Les classiques et
les romantiques,” in which he sought to set the record straight, claiming that
Labrouste had not designated anyone as his successor. Jules André may well
have taken in a few of Labrouste’s students, but he was not the latter’s choice.
314 architecture and the historical imagination
Adolphe Lance made the same point in the Encyclopédie d’architecture: “What
constitutes an atelier is not the space in which it takes place nor the students
who attend it; but the teacher and his doctrine. If the latter retires, everything
leaves with him.”34 In Labrouste’s private papers, there is a transcription of a
letter (probably to Beulé) in which Labrouste expresses his outrage that André
could be seen as the successor he chose. He explains that having been unable
to find an available replacement among his own disciples, he had dispatched
students either to Questel or to Viollet-le-Duc.35 From a page in his private
agenda, we actually know that Labrouste paid Viollet-le-Duc a visit on the
very day he closed his atelier.36 For many, it was a given that Viollet-le-Duc
was the true heir to Labrouste’s radical teaching.
Viollet-le-Duc happily accepted Labrouste’s invitation to take on a group
of his students. An announcement of his setting up an atelier was made in the
Revue générale in December 1856, and, from a short news item in the Encyclopédie
d’architecture, we can date its first meeting to January 15, 1857. It was certainly
flattering to be handed the torch by Labrouste, whose prestige was high. But
Viollet-le-Duc must have realized that it would not be easy. If Adolphe Lance
is to be believed, Labrouste had closed his atelier not only because he was too
busy with his practice, which had finally taken off (thanks to three substantial
commissions: the Rennes seminary, the Bibliothèque nationale, and the Fould
mansion), but because of his frustration in seeing his students’ work go
unrecognized by academic juries year after year. Anatole de Baudot, a student
in Labrouste’s atelier, is more precise when he testifies to a schism among
Labrouste’s students that precipitated his decision. A conservative group led
by Julien Guadet clashed with a more radical faction represented by men such
as de Baudot himself. Labrouste’s atelier had become untenable, split between
those pushing toward more traditional Beaux-Arts methods (and therefore a
chance to win the Grand Prix) and those leaning toward the more radical camp
of Viollet-le-Duc. Labrouste’s studio counted a great number of students and
enjoyed an enormous prestige, but like the École de David at the turn of the
century, its ambitious members were not necessarily of one voice; they often
rebelled, and were prone to polarization.
Right from the start, Viollet-le-Duc conceived his teaching as an open
confrontation with the Académie des Beaux-Arts. He did not even respect
the traditional atelier format: he would hand out his own projects instead
of relying on the monthly competitions set up by the administrators of the
École. The first project he submitted to students was quite daring and topical:
the creation of a new city for Algeria, each student having to conceive one
key building within the ensemble: city hall, hospital, church, school, theatre,
down to the water tower feeding the city. As I have mentioned, he planned
moreover to supplement his studio teaching with a series of public lectures
that he intended, from the beginning, to publish in the form of “Entretiens.”
In other words, Viollet-le-Duc wanted to provide a complete and positive
doctrine that would reach out beyond his immediate circle of students. He
was not simply running an atelier, he was mounting a school within the
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 315
school. No wonder Beulé felt it necessary to react, and recast Viollet-le-Duc
once again as a mere Gothic copyist. The administrators of the École, for their
part, set up as many roadblocks as possible, pretending, for instance, that
no room was available for him to deliver open lectures. In the preface to his
Entretiens sur l’architecture, Viollet-le-Duc claimed to have waited patiently
for things to smooth out. After all, he expected the negative reaction. What
he did not expect, however, was the disappointing performance of his own
students. The various monuments for Algeria they submitted to him turned
out to be in the vein of a Troubadour farce, a parody of his teaching, which
seemed to confirm Beulé’s stigmatization of him as a mere revivalist. De
Baudot reports that Viollet-le-Duc was profoundly upset at seeing this line-up
of Neo-Gothic buildings for a city in North Africa. Robin Middleton recounts
the (apocryphal) story, according to which one day, returning from a long
touring mission, Viollet-le-Duc found “the studio decked with caricatures of
an impertinent sort. He was deeply offended. He took up his hat and departed,
never to return.”37
The coup of 1863–1864
Following his bitterly disappointing academic venture, Viollet-le-Duc went
back to his regular mode of disseminating ideas, and in January 1858,
launched the publication of his undelivered lecture course under the title of
the Entretiens sur l’architecture. But he kept his eye on the École des BeauxArts, waiting for an occasion to mount a more serious offensive. It came
around 1861, when strong antagonism arose between the Surintendant of
imperial museums Comte Alfred-Émilien O’Hara de Nieuwerkerke and the
Académie des Beaux-Arts. Since the Académie took every opportunity to
criticize Nieuwerkerke’s policies concerning collections and other matters, the
latter declared a “petite guerre” against the arrogant group of academicians.38
It was the perfect opportunity for Viollet-le-Duc and his co-conspirator
Prosper Mérimée. With the support of Nieuwerkerke on the government
side, and enlisting their close friend Henri Courmont, they were able to
start conceiving a serious reform of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. All four
men—Nieuwerkerke, Courmont, Mérimée and Viollet-le-Duc—sat on the
Commission des monuments historiques, the traditional stronghold of the
opposition. In the background was the emperor, attentive through the whole
series of events.
When the decree reforming the École des Beaux-Arts was issued in
November 1863, it appeared as an unexpected coup de théâtre, not to say a
“coup d’état,” as many labeled it in reference to Napoleon’s own assault of
1851. Yet astute observers had noticed changes in the administration of the
École since the advent of the Second Empire, changes symptomatic of the
state’s desire to reinforce its prerogative in the management of the schools.39
First, the Service des Beaux-Arts, which had normally operated under the
316 architecture and the historical imagination
supervision of the Ministre de l’Intérieur, was reassigned to the Ministre d’État,
Comte Alexandre-Joseph-Colonna Walewski; then, a few months before the
November 1863 decree, the Service was placed under the supervision of the
Maison de l’Empereur itself. These administrative reassignments served
to ensure a more effective scrutiny of exhibitions and of artistic education.
The creation of the fugitive Salon des Refusés by Napoleon III in April 1863
is a famous example of the state’s new interest in the arts. The general aim
was to release the arts from the stifling grip of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
Increased state control thus meant, paradoxically, greater freedom for the
artists: from the state’s point of view, inventiveness served the nation’s goal
of modernization.
The precise series of committees and reports that led to the actual coup
having been summarized by Bonnet, I will outline only the major points.
Between May and September 1862, Viollet-le-Duc published an article titled
“L’enseignement des Beaux-Arts: il y a quelque chose à faire” in installments
in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts.40 It charted the reform to come and every one of its
recommendations would be picked up in government decrees. In many ways,
Viollet-le-Duc’s critique followed familiar lines, in particular drawing on the
recommendations Léon de Laborde presented in his report on the London
exhibition of 1851. Stressing the fact that the professors of the École and the
members of the Académie were self-elected, and therefore unanswerable
to the community of artists or to society in general, Viollet-le-Duc accused
the twin institutions of perpetuating outdated methods with impunity. He
further complained that the École did not provide any substantial education,
limiting its curriculum to the staging of competitions judged by the very
people who set them up. According to Viollet-le-Duc, the École needed to
integrate practical and positive studies. The arts, he claimed, had lost their
spontaneity in the modern world (“We come too late,” he wrote). The artist
had, therefore, no choice but “to enter the path of knowledge; a route which is
new, fertile, full of positive facts of a real grandeur and of a mordant flavor.”41
The new knowledge Viollet-le-Duc had in mind was not so much that of the
hard sciences, but that of “history.” Comparative historical studies allowed
the artist to assess and renew the tradition of which he was part, to find the lost
thread. In order to implement this critical orientation, the state needed to take
over the control of the École, since the Académie had no coherent program. It
seems paradoxical that Viollet-le-Duc would accuse the Académie of being at
once dogmatic and without a unified curriculum. But for him, the academic
doctrine was merely a set of dead formulae, not a living source of ideas for
the present. His proposal, in contrast, was entirely directed to releasing the
artists’s own personality.42
Viollet-le-Duc elaborated on the teaching of drawing, the key tool for
painters, sculptors, and architects. In this regard, he was only reasserting the
academic tradition of “des arts du dessin.” But in his understanding, drawing
was not a controlling matrix for the application of academic rules; rather,
it was a means to liberate the artist’s capacity to think—originality was the
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 317
fundamental goal. “In France, the teaching of the arts must, above all, aim to
develop [the artist’s] individuality and to help the searching minds that are
possessed by the desire to express what they think they have discovered.”43
He celebrated the pedagogy of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, a professor
at the École de Dessin who had devised a “mnemonic” method: he showed
his students a model or a natural landscape setting, and would ask them the
next day to draw what they had seen strictly from memory. The method
was based on the principle that exercising the artist’s visual memory—or
“l’observation conservée” to use Lecoq de Boisbaudran’s expression44—is the
necessary channel for the idealization of nature. Baudelaire, in his famous
essay “Le peintre de la vie moderne,” first published in 1863, the year after
Viollet-le-Duc’s article in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, greatly emphasized the
role of memory: “All good and true draftsmen [dessinateurs] draw from the
image traced in their brain, and not from nature.” Thanks to this mnemonic
power, “things are reborn on paper, natural and more than natural, beautiful
and more than beautiful, singular and endowed with a passionate life [vie
enthousiaste] like the soul of the author.”45 Viollet-le-Duc is not so lyrical, and
yet his aim is not dissimilar: he seeks to “preserve the native purity of the
[artist’s] talent.”46 The anarchic undertow implicit in such an unleashing of
originality could be kept in check by architecture, the leading art capable of
channeling various artistic energies into the unity of its formal construction.
In the wake of this decisive article by Viollet-le-Duc, Mérimée elaborated
on the same topic in a report following his visit at the London exposition
of 1862. Noting the immense progress of industry in England, he calls for a
closer alliance between art and industry to insure France’s competitiveness, as
Léon de Laborde had in 1856. His recommendations for a pedagogic reform
of the arts is so close to Viollet-le-Duc’s idea that it is plain they were acting
in concert. Mérimée’s report is important, because, more than Viollet-le-Duc’s
article, it demonstrated how much the issue of the union of the arts and its
ties with industry was at the heart of the 1863 reform—and made all the more
explicit its link with Second Empire governmental policies.
In the year following the publication of these two texts, in June 1863, a
governmental decree named Nieuwerkerke Surintendant des Beaux-Arts. The
same decree placed the twin government services overlooking the École des
Beaux-Arts and the Institut impérial de France in two separate ministries:
the Académie des Beaux-Arts was reassigned to the Maison de l’Empereur
as already mentioned, while the Institut was reassigned to the Ministère de
l’Instruction publique. No longer answering to the same minister, the two
institutions lost their capacity to act in concert. At the same time, Henri
Courmont, thanks to Mérimée, became Directeur of the Service des BeauxArts. By August 1863, as Bonnet sums it up, “everything was set in place:
the men were chosen, the roles distributed, the reports written.”47 For the
next three months, nothing would transpire, all communications between the
four men and the emperor being kept secret, until on November 15, 1863, the
famous decree was published in Le Moniteur universel. Signed by Napoleon III
318 architecture and the historical imagination
on November 13, it was accompanied by an extensive preamble written by
Nieuwerkerke which made clear the spirit of the reform: the teaching of the
École des Beaux-Arts must be liberalized to be in tune with present social
conditions and, consequently, must be removed from the control of the
Académie des Beaux-Arts.
Essentially, the decree imposed five types of measures:
1. It reinforced the teaching structure by setting up “in-house” practical
studios (three in each discipline) under the direction of artists named by the
government and accountable by means of mandatory annual exhibitions. It
instituted teaching chairs in aesthetics and the history of art, and in history
and archaeology. Moreover, a series of open chairs were made available.48
2. The system of monthly competitions was abolished. Only the Grand Prix de
Rome competition was maintained, but it was radically altered: the age limit
was set at 25, a single prize per discipline was to be awarded, the government
pension was reduced to four years from five, and the pensionnaires were
allowed to travel anywhere they wished after the first two mandatory years
in Rome. The Grand Prix du paysage historique in painting was abolished, a
measure tied to the important issue of the hierarchy of genres. Most crucially,
the judging of the competition was taken away from the Académie des BeauxArts and placed in the hands of a special external jury set up separately for
each discipline.
3. The director of the Académie de France in Rome was now named by the
government instead of the Académie des Beaux-Arts itself. The Directeur of
the Académie was obliged to send the Ministre de la Maison de l’Empereur et des
Beaux-Arts detailed reports of activities every year.
4. The management of the École des Beaux-Arts was put in the hands of a
directeur instead of the assembly of professors, as it had been in the past.
Professors would be nominated by a new Conseil supérieur de l’enseignement,
which exercised ultimate control over all school regulations. Members of this
council would be named by the Ministre.
This Conseil supérieur de l’enseignement would prove to be the weak point of
the reform. It was a crucial organ, since it bore responsibility for implementing
the decree by drafting precise school regulations. The Maréchal Jean-BaptistePhilibert Vaillant, the Ministre de la Maison de l’Empereur et des Beaux-Arts,
tried to avoid breaking completely from the Académie by naming some of
its members to the Conseil; it was a bad decision. Many of the candidates
simply refused to sit on such a controversial council, others resigned after a
short period, while the few who remained proved to be remarkably skillful in
lessening the effect of the reform. Nieuwerkerke, Courmont, and Mérimée sat
together on the Conseil, but only Mérimée was articulate enough to oppose
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 319
academicians like Hector-Martin Lefuel and Alphonse-Henri Guy de Gisors,
who banded together to deaden the spirit of the decree. Mérimée left for
Cannes on December 20, 1863, and the two academicians were able to weigh
down upon every decision. Viollet-le-Duc, who did not sit on the Conseil,
wrote to Courmont on December 31, 1863, commenting lucidly, if not too
kindly, on the general disorganization of the Conseil:
Lefuel is bad, he is false, I only had to see him twice to come to that conclusion.
Nieuwerkerke hailed him as an ally, and he was wrong. … Gisors is weak, selfish,
and cares no more about the arts than his old boots. All of this is worthless. … We
must trace clearly the limits of each camp. Once we have, we will see new recruits join
our side every day. … The Académie Française and the Académie des Inscriptions
are with us in great majority. … If Lefuel and Gisors leave the council, and if I were
the Ministre, I would name men such as [Ulysse] Trélat, [Adolphe] Lance, [César]
Daly, [Léon] Vaudoyer (if he would accept), [Jean-Baptiste-Gabriel-Eugène] Laval,
and [Jean-Juste-Gustave] Lisch, well-established and well-educated men, incapable …
of betraying you or causing you to make mistakes. You will not have any trouble in
finding painters [supporting our cause].49
Despite Viollet-le-Duc’s wise advice to define clearly each camp, no definite
action was taken. The Académie mounted a huge press campaign to mobilize
public opinion in support of its cause, and though not entirely successful,
it did generate controversy. Nieuwerkerke, the Maréchal Vaillant and even
the emperor started to waver. Courmont, deep in the trench as Directeur of
the Service des Beaux-Arts, was overwhelmed, finding less and less coherent
support within the ministry. He was forced into an ever-increasing number
of compromises. Viollet-le-Duc remained steady, but when named to the
new chair in aesthetics, he would find himself the target of the opposition
when he inaugurated his lecture course on January 30, 1864. Noisy riots led
by architecture students Julien Guadet and Jean-Louis Pascal followed the
lecture, events widely covered in the press and which became the crux of the
whole Beaux-Arts affair.
The uproar surrounding Viollet-le-Duc’s lecture course in the hemicycle
of the École des Beaux-Arts has been described countless times, but the event
has so often been exaggerated that a few clarifications are in order. Maxime
Du Camp’s very lively but highly distorted account published in his Souvenirs
d’un demi-siècle, and John Summerson’s emphatic hailing of the course as the
mythical moment of the birth of modernism in architecture have both been
quoted often enough.50 Summerson’s argument raises interesting issues, to
which I will return later with respect to Viollet-le-Duc’s iron projects published
in the second volume of the Entretiens. Maxime Du Camp’s description of
Viollet-le-Duc’s opening lecture as a “Babylonian uproar” (chahut babylonien),
where students uttered the full range of known animal cries, and threw
apples, eggs, and coins while insulting the speaker, who consequently had to
cut his lecture short, is very picturesque but entirely false. Du Camp pretends
to have heard the description from Mérimée who, he adds, claimed “never to
have had so much fun.”51 Mérimée was in fact in Cannes in January 1864, and
320 architecture and the historical imagination
he certainly would not have enjoyed seeing one of his closest friends being
ridiculed and insulted on the matter of a reform he himself helped to instigate.
The reports published in the press the morning after the event are
considerably more sober. Students did wreak havoc during the inaugural
lecture, but it was intermittent and did not capture much of the journalists’
attention. The noise was limited to “ironic murmurs, persistent coughing,
soft but continuous stamping.”52 Without doubt it was a disturbance, but
the lecture was not cut short. Philippe Burty reported in La Presse that there
was actually more applause than interruptions.53 More noteworthy—and
the reason why the event was reported by journalists—was the student
demonstration that followed the lecture: a group followed Nieuwerkerke and
his entourage as they walked across the Seine up to the Louvre. Rumor had
it that Théophile Gautier, walking with Nieuwerkerke, was inadvertently
arrested by the police in the courtyard of the Louvre. The story, as Le Figaro
emphasized,54 made for an interesting parallel with the famous battle of
Hernani of 30 years earlier, when the young Gautier led the Hugolian faction.
But a brief news report published in Le Temps dismissed the story as false.55
Police did intervene, Gautier was indeed part of the melee, but Nieuwerkerke
was able to calm everyone down before any arrests were made. Thanks to a
good speech, the latter was even applauded by the students as he entered his
residence at the Louvre. That version, repeated in many newspapers, seems
closest to the truth.
Thanks to a letter from Viollet-le-Duc to Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve,
we have a detailed description of the second lecture, which took place on
February 5: “From the second lecture,” wrote Viollet-le-Duc,
I was able to regain control. Of the 300 [students] present, about half left following
my issuing a formal ultimatum. They had assumed that everyone would follow
along. Roughly 200 stayed behind and listened to the lecture with repeated applause,
cheering me as I was leaving at the end. The whole matter was settled.56
Viollet-le-Duc had made sure that the names of these 200 supporters were
taken down, intending to allow only them to attend future lectures. But
Nieuwerkerke, anxious to stay on good terms with the student population,
did not enforce the restriction. On the third meeting, the opposing faction
was thus able to return with a vengeance, dragging along a group of
medical students. Interruptions resumed. Judging from Viollet-le-Duc’s
correspondence, he was nonetheless able to pursue his teaching. It was only
on the occasion of the seventh lecture, on March 18, that more scandalous
behavior occurred. Having been openly and personally insulted, coins being
thrown at his lectern, Viollet-le-Duc decided to put an end to his course. He
sent his official letter of resignation to the Maréchal Vaillant on March 26.
Beyond their anecdotal interest, these events demonstrate the extent of
student mobilization, pointing out, moreover, how the student body was not
of one mind on the issue. Julien Guadet admitted that, aside from the issue
of the age limit for the Grand Prix de Rome, painters and sculptors did not
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 321
mobilize as much as architecture students.57 Modification of the rules for the
Grand prix de Rome was indeed the most touchy subject, especially for the older
and more ambitious students who were becoming serious contenders for the
prize. By January 1864, the Conseil supérieur had already loosened some of
the terms of the reform pertaining to the Grand Prix, making provisions for the
age restriction to go into effect only three years later, for example. But changes
implemented either at that time or in the future remained a menace.
Other elements of the reform were frequently raised as topics of contention
among students. The institution of the new public “in-house” ateliers,
controlled and financed by the government, generated considerable anxiety.
Beaux-Arts studios had traditionally been at the students’ initiative: they
sought the instructor of their choice, they jointly paid his honorarium and
rented the space for the atelier. According to the terms of the reform, “private”
ateliers were still permitted, but the addition of government-controlled studios
created a two-tier system that seem to encroach upon students’ autonomy.
Students were right to point out the importance of “external” studios,
arguably the living heart of Beaux-Arts teaching all through the nineteenth
century. In a letter to Mérimée written immediately after his resignation,
Viollet-le-Duc himself admitted the risk of government interference: “Clearly
artists do not want government control to substitute that of the Institut, and
they are right in my opinion.”58 His observation points to the larger paradox
behind the reform movement: how can liberalization be effected through
greater control, governmental or otherwise? In the service of which cause was
the reform’s promotion of individual originality? There was no reason why
students should be trustful of the policies of the Second Empire, which had
initiated a process of liberalization only since 1860. Not so long ago, SainteBeuve, to his great distress, had been the target of violent student protests
during his lectures at the Collège de France, solely because of his allegiance
to Napoleon III’s regime.59 In the Beaux-Arts episode, Viollet-le-Duc, a known
courtier in the imperial salons at Compiègne, was seen as the most obvious
embodiment of the government’s forceful hand. Somewhat paradoxically,
he was also a known anticlerical, lumped together with “intellectuels athés”
such as Émile Littré, Hippolyte Taine, Ernest Renan, and Alfred Maury. A
very strong polarization in Parisian intellectual life had emerged following
the liberalization of the regime in 1860, thanks to the newly won freedom of
the press. Texts such as Taine’s Les philosophes français du XIXe siècle (1857)
or Renan’s Vie de Jésus (1863) were devastating attacks upon the reigning
spiritualist philosophy. Monseigneur Félix Dupanloup, Bishop of Orléans, felt
it necessary in 1863 to publish an Avertissement à la jeunesse et aux pères de famille
against materialist intellectuals destroying society’s foundations.60 The force
of the reaction against mounting positivism was not to be underestimated,
even within artistic circles. In 1864 Viollet-le-Duc may have fallen prey to it.
Viollet-le-Duc’s position cannot be easily circumscribed. Even for students
open to more radical ideas and thus likely to be interested in the newly
emerging field of aesthetics, it may not have been clear why Viollet-le-Duc
322 architecture and the historical imagination
should have been the one chosen to teach it. He may have integrated some
consideration of aesthetics into the first of his Entretiens sur l’architecture,
but he was seen as an architect and an archaeologist, not as a critic or
philosopher. In his Architecture privée au XIXe siècle sous Napoléon III (1864),
César Daly had in fact opposed the study of aesthetics to the devotion to
archaeology.61 Archaeologist Hyacinthe Husson, commenting in the Revue
générale de l’architecture et des travaux publics on Viollet-le-Duc’s Beaux-Arts
lectures, deemed the course “insuffisamment approfondi”: “To profess a course
in aesthetics,” writes Husson, “it is not sufficient to be an artist or to have a
wide knowledge of the history of art; a philosophical point of view must be
apparent, it must even predominate.”62
Viollet-le-Duc’s exclusive association with medieval archaeology would
certainly not have helped his cause. The burgeoning field of aesthetics in
France had developed from a classical perspective, the Hellenism of the
new École Française d’Athènes being its nurturing ground.63 Ludovic Vitet
underscored this aspect in an article that came late in the history of the
controversy: “C’est un classique qu’il fallait, un classique éprouvé, un franc ami
du Parthénon [A classicist was required, a proven classicist, a frank admirer
of the Parthenon].”64 In fact, a general reaction against the Middle Ages had
emerged during the Second Empire. What was once considered poetic was
now deemed maladif. Jules Janin, writing for the Journal des débats in November
1854, had no qualms about describing the Middle Ages as abominable, “the
shame of civilization and the disgrace of the human spirit”65—a position
that would have been inconceivable for a liberal critic during the 1830s.
Strangely, the attack on the Gothic was now being mounted by the very
group of intellectuals who were Viollet-le-Duc’s most natural allies.66 Ernest
Renan’s “L’art du moyen âge et les causes de sa décadence,” published in
the Revue des Deux Mondes in July 1862 is its most famous declaration. Renan
decried the Gothic, using medical terminology to speak of the cathedral as
suffering from a “fatal illness,” bearing within itself a “principe de mort.” Just
like the Fortoul clan earlier, Renan considers the Gothic a freak phenomenon,
a desperate attempt “to give a reasonable form to a paradox, to make sense
of a moment of ecstasy.”67 Even Jules Michelet, once the great eulogist of
the Middle Ages, made a radical turnabout in the preface to the volume
on the Renaissance in his Histoire de France (1855).68 He was harsher than
Renan. In his Bible de l’humanité of 1864, Michelet described the whole of the
Middle Ages as suffering from a morbid spell: “We must make a complete
break, and forcefully, frankly, turn our backs on the Middle Ages, on this
morbid past, which, even when it is no longer active, has a terrible influence
through the contagion of death. We must neither fight, nor criticize, we must
simply forget.”69 The influence of writers such as Renan or Michelet should
not be underestimated. Viollet-le-Duc reacted angrily, as witnessed in a note
among his private papers, in which he wrote that, “men of letters would
like to kill the spirit and the mind [les hommes de lettres veulent tuer l’esprit et
l’intelligence].”70
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 323
A new resistance to the Gothic and the Middle Ages was thus emerging at
the time when Viollet-le-Duc was taking up his chair at the Beaux-Arts. His
lectures were of course not about the Gothic at all. Viollet-le-Duc wrote to
Mérimée in April 1864 that the only reason he took up the post was “to prove
that I was not merely living in the Middle Ages.”71 But the proof had not yet
been made. It is unlikely that painters and sculptors would have been very
excited about having a medieval archaeologist teach aesthetics. For a majority
of architecture students—those not sold on the Gothic—the thought of having
the head of the diocesan school take control of aesthetics at the École des
Beaux-Arts was positively frightening. For an ambitious and ruthless student
aiming for the Grand Prix such as Guadet, it meant a war had to be fought.
In his remembrances of 1911, Guadet reports with smug satisfaction that,
even when considered in the short term, the École’s great traditions were not
in the least altered by the 1863 reform; he dismissed the whole affair as of
purely anecdotal interest. In contrast, Albert Boime hailed the event as a small
revolution, and following upon Summerson’s claim of 1949, quoted above,
considered it a key to the emergence of modern art: impressionism in painting
and iron construction in architecture.72 In a strict sense, Guadet is closer to
the truth: all elements of the November 13, 1863 decree which survived the
compromises of 1864 were entirely nullified by a decree signed by Adolphe
Thiers the same day of the year 1871, one of many symbolic acts of erasure of
Second Empire policies by the Third Republic. Guadet could appear content,
however, only because he chose to ignore the radical changes that took place
in the arts between 1863 and 1911: the École des Beaux-Arts may well have
resisted change, but at the cost of losing touch with artistic developments.
It may be specious to point to the 1863 reform as the symbolic birth of so
complex and elusive a movement as that of modern art, but as Bonnet rightly
concludes in his recent study, it did make official a form of discourse around
the issue of the unity of the arts and their ties to industry. There are many ways
to characterize the emergence of modern art, but clearly the destruction of the
hierarchy of genres in painting, the renewal of the decorative arts, and the
importance gained by industrial production in the culture of objects, would
be central to it. The 1863 reform was a key step in the acknowledgement of
these aspects. If the reform failed at the Beaux-Arts, the ideas underlying
it simply migrated to other institutions. Not even a year after the fiasco of
1864, Viollet-le-Duc helped his friend Émile Trélat found the École Centrale
d’Architecture at 59, rue d’Enfer, a school entirely shaped by the ideas of the
reform and supported by an impressive group of stakeholders from all the
centers of power in France, including Prince Napoleon. The École de Dessin,
whose drawing pedagogy had been a model for the 1863 reform, matured
into the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in 1877, to become one of the most
important foyers of Art Nouveau. And if the Third Republic restored the old
structure of the École des Beaux-Arts, it paradoxically instituted in primary
and secondary schools a general and methodical drawing pedagogy that was
germane to the ideas of the reform. So Viollet-le-Duc’s observation in May
324 architecture and the historical imagination
1864 that “the revolution has made such progress that there is no turning
back” may well be accurate.73 Ludovic Vitet, who stood on the opposite side
of the debate, could not avoid drawing the same conclusions:
It is necessary for the Académie [des Beaux-Arts] to recognize and expect that, if it
does regain control, it will need to make more than one move. … It is inherent to
revolutions that, even when the time comes to correct their mistakes, to do away with
their excess, we must let survive a part of what they did.74
However the status of the 1863 reform is settled in the history of modern art,
it is obvious that the reform was of crucial importance in the life and thought
of Viollet-le-Duc. It reveals how he came to reach out through political action.
For him, it was not merely about reforming an outdated institution, but about
effecting a profound historical correction. In nearly all of his correspondence
throughout the unfolding of events, Viollet-le-Duc used analogies drawn
from warfare and referred to major historic events. His military references
are so numerous as to amount to a consistent system of representation. Men
from both sides of the debate actually identified the reform with a coup d’état,
which was not unexpected, since the uprising was organized by the same
regime that plotted the Coup d’État of 1851. But Viollet-le-Duc obviously took
the analogy one step further. For example, in the midst of complaining about
the presence of “traitors” (like Lefuel and Gisors) in the Conseil supérieur de
l’enseignement, he wrote to Courmont in December 1863:
When a war is about to start, I know nothing more dangerous than showing one’s
plans to people who, tomorrow, will pass over to the enemy’s side. … The revolution
has begun, and as all revolutions, it can no longer be stopped. We are now at the
stage of 1788, when the parliaments were opposing the court and exiled in Troyes.
The Académie is playing the same game, but was it the parliaments who profited
and became the leaders of the revolution? They fell into oblivion after making
a bit of noise. … The situation is taking shape, which I like; let’s not forget that
revolutions become compromised only because of concessions made to the forces
rallied. Carnot was a great man, and Robespierre, even if arrogant, knew how to act
as a revolutionary. If Napoleon had not pampered the marquis of the ancien régime so
much, maybe he would have died in the Tuileries. But, for God’s sake, let’s respond
to Beulé. … If we are skillful and if our leaders do not give way, within six months
the Académie will be moping and setting upon Beulé for having compromised them.
Whatever we do … the revolution must proceed; best for us to direct it.”75
As events unfolded, Viollet-le-Duc registered the battles lost and won. In a
letter to Sainte-Beuve written on February 5, 1864, a few hours after his second
lecture on aesthetics described above, he proclaims with great joy:
We had today our battle of Austerlitz. False maneuver by our enemies [referring to
the fact that the group of protesting students left the room following Viollet-le-Duc’s
ultimatum], charge à fond, and total victory. The fourth section of the Institut has lived.
Make sure that yours [the Académie Française] be long-lived.76
There is obvious humor in this, a mandatory zest in epistolary exchanges among
Mérimée’s friends. But the remarks stemmed from real conviction. Viollet-
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 325
le-Duc was playing on the idea that what was going on during the Second
Empire was basically a repetition and consolidation of the revolutionary wars
of the First. In his battle against the Beaux-Arts, the Académie obviously stood
for the nobility of the ancien régime: “We will remember the privileges of the
Académie,” he writes, “like we remember the privileges of the nobility before
1789. It will be a historical fact, a regret for a few disgruntled people, the
beginning of an era of emancipation and progress for the men of the century.”77
Whether the parallel is historically apt or not is irrelevant. What is important
is that Viollet-le-Duc’s coup against the Beaux-Arts was given a historical
horizon, and thus became “naturalized” as an occurrence of a fundamental
antagonism. In the sixth “Entretien” of 1859 Viollet-le-Duc wrote, echoing
Hugo’s thesis in Notre-Dame de Paris, that “art staged its 1789 revolution in
1170,” meaning that the Gothic builders’ “liberalization” of art anticipated the
political emancipation of 1789.78 So, following the swing of the pendulum, the
1863 reform of the Beaux-Arts repeated 1789, which itself repeated 1170. The
same battle was thus waged across the centuries. In Viollet-le-Duc’s mind,
this cyclic repetition will increasingly be made dependent upon physiological
continuity, in a sharpening of Augustin Thierry’s old theme of the antagonism
of France’s two founding races. A few paragraphs further on in the same
“Entretien,” Viollet-le-Duc writes that, “our workers are fashioned from the
same soil as our soldiers.”79 He may have meant to say “the same blood” since
a few sentences above he had claimed that, “nothing can modify the spirit
of the races that cover our globe.”80 His opening lecture in the Beaux-Arts
hemicycle can be seen as an exemplary moment of that eternal recurrence.
Standing in front of a few hundred French students, many of whom could
barely contain their rage, Viollet-le-Duc devoted an entire lecture to the
founding myths of the Aryans, praising the “unfailing youth of these noble
primitive races” in which “are hidden these oppositional forces, productive
and destructive, that animate the whole of nature.”81 His key message to
students was that no healthy creativity is possible without a concomitant
willingness to destroy elements of the immediate past, that negativity acted
as a sort of restorative bloodletting, as it were. There was thus not a little irony
in the turbulent scene of Viollet-le-Duc’s Beaux-Arts lecture, an irony that the
ill-humored Julien Guadet was obviously unable to grasp. Perhaps no one
did. But Viollet-le-Duc himself must have felt a perverse joy, to see within
Félix Duban’s elegant hemicycle, sitting under Paul Delaroche’s painted
panorama summarizing the whole history of Western art, these “unfailing”
but turbulent Aryan youths, at once “productive and destructive,” whom he
conceived as being at the source of history’s eternal forces.
Notes
1
At least according to Prosper Mérimée, in a letter to Viollet-le-Duc, February 18,
1862; see Prosper Mérimée, Correspondance générale, ed. Maurice Parturier, 17
vols. (Paris: Le divan, 1941–1964), vol. 5, 49.
326 architecture and the historical imagination
2
This precise figure was recently established by Arnaud Timbert in Restaurer et
bâtir, Viollet-le-Duc en Bourgogne (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du
Septentrion, 2013), 168–169.
3
“Je bâtis à Paris, bon an mal an, deux ou trois maisons pour de simples
bourgeois, deux ou trois châteaux en province,” Viollet-le-Duc to CharlesAugustin Sainte-Beuve, February 15, 1864, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports,
1863–64,” doc. 137.
4
Anatole de Baudot, L’architecture. Le passé. Le présent (Paris: Henri Laurens,
1916), 197.
5
Étienne Delécluze to Viollet-le-Duc, Versailles, August 15, 1858, MAP,
“Correspondance et rapports, 1855–59,” doc. 244.
6
See Pierre-Marie Auzas, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1814–1879 (Paris: Caisse nationale
des monuments historiques, 1979), 99.
7
The practice of liquidating an old family property for capitalist profit had been
identified and condemned by conservative social reformers such as Frédéric Le
Play; see his La réforme sociale déduite de l’observation comparée des peuples européens
(Paris: Plon, 1864), vol. 1, 179.
8
Paul Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine (Paris: É. Champion,
1914), 65.
9
“Tout est bien tenu ici [rue Condorcet], nous avons un concierge qui est un
chef d’oeuvre, mais aussi est-ce le commandant de la place de Paris, mon ami
le Général Soumain qui me l’a donné. La maison est un miroir et on chercherait
un grain de poussière sans le trouver. Cela est un grand bien. Le calme, le
silence, la propreté, l’ordre, pas de paroles inutiles, une grande régularité; si
avec cela on n’a pas l’esprit trop tourmenté, on vit convenablement,” Viollet-leDuc to his wife Elisabeth, Paris, September 1, 1866, MAP, “Correspondance et
rapports, 1865–68,” doc. 517.
10
In another letter to his wife dated August 9, 1866, Viollet-le-Duc writes that the
concierge was also a military man, particularly useful for guarding the house
during Viollet-le-Duc’s frequent absences, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports,
1865–68,” doc. 512.
11
This last passage is paraphrased from Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa
doctrine, 64.
12
Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle
(Paris: B. Bance and A. Morel, 1854–1868), hereafter DRA, vol. 6, 272.
13
“La véritable civilisation, … la civilisation fertile, active, est celle au milieu de
laquelle le citoyen conserve la plénitude de son individualité,” Viollet-le-Duc,
DRA, vol. 6, 272.
14
“Un vêtement porté journellement ne peut manquer d’exercer une influence sur
le physique.” Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l’époque
carolingienne à la renaissance (Paris: B. Bance and A. Morel, 1858–1875), hereafter
DRM, vol. 4, 221.
15
“Le port des longs vêtements faits d’étoffes souples, à plis serrés, tels qu’on les
portait pendant les XIe et XIIe siècles, exigeait une éducation complète, une
habitude prise dès l’enfance, certains mouvements et gestes qui s’alliaient avec
cet habillement,” Viollet-le-Duc, DRM, vol. 4, 220.
16
Gout, Viollet-le-Duc: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, 65.
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 327
17
The first “reflections” date from October 1856. See MAP, “Correspondance et
rapports, 1855–59,” doc. 150.
18
“Les restes du vieux monde craquent de tous côtés, et je ne vois que l’argent
qui s’élève à la place de la ruine prochaine des vieux préjugés. Quelle est
donc l’idée qui nous sauvera? Est-il une idée ou un principe que l’on puisse
considérer comme applicable au moment du déchirement dernier? … Je ne
vois pas où nous allons, mais nous allons quelque part d’un pas accéléré. Tous
les gouvernements d’Europe reposent sur la pointe d’une aiguille. Le guerre
est usée, les populations ne la comprennent plus, et ne pourraient la faire avec
passion. … L’argent, voilà le seul mobile, la seule force debout, or aucune force
n’est plus facile à déplacer, elle ne consiste qu’en la possession brutale, tout
comme la force de l’épée, elle ne peut s’appuyer ni sur un principe, ni sur une
idée,” Viollet-le-Duc, reflection no. 33, July 16, 1857, MAP, “Correspondance et
rapports, 1855–59,” doc. 150.
19
“Est-ce que l’égoïsme serait la limite où la perfectibilité humaine doit
nécessairement arriver?” Viollet-le-Duc, reflection no. 42, February 25, 1858,
MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1855–59,” doc. 150.
20
“X vie, il se trouve en rapport avec les grands, il est attiré vers eux, non par
intérêt, … mais parce qu’ils sont grands et qu’il admet d’instinct que la hauteur
de la situation est en rapport avec l’élévation de l’intelligence et du cœur. X
trouve trop souvent que les grands sont petits. Leurs faiblesses lui paraissent
invraisemblables, il en souffre comme d’une infériorité personnelle, … Mais
le retour est impossible; si les grands lui semblent petits, les petits restent à
ses yeux plus petits encore,” Viollet-le-Duc, reflection no. 61, October 30, 1861,
MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1865–68,” doc. 289.
21
“La passion est dans tout et la passion est comme le système nerveux appliqué
à toute chose, c’est elle qui donne le mouvement, ou plutôt la conscience du
mouvement, la vie et le sentiment. … il n’y a que ceux qui mettent de la passion
dans ce qu’ils font qui arrivent à la supériorité,” Viollet-le-Duc, reflection no. 44,
February 25, 1858, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1855–59,” doc. 150.
22
Maxime Du Camp, Souvenirs d’un demi-siècle, 2 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1949),
vol. 1, 220.
23
Viollet-le-Duc to Adolphe Lance, “À Adolphe Lance,” Encyclopédie d’architecture,
hereafter EdA, 6 (1856): cols. 5 and 11.
24
Viollet-le-Duc, “Beaux-Arts. Leur réorganisation administrative,” newspaper
article bound with Viollet-le-Duc’s private papers. The date of March 6, 1878
is inscribed, but the title of the newspaper is not; see MAP, Correspondance et
rapports, 1878–79, doc. 20 bis.
25
Alain Bonnet, L’enseignement des arts au XIXe siècle. La réforme de l’École des BeauxArts de 1863 et la fin du modèle académique (Rennes: Presses universitaires de
Rennes, 2006). I have drawn much from this excellent study; see also Françoise
Véry, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc et le projet de réforme de 1863 de l’enseignement de l’École
des beaux-arts de Paris (Grenoble: CORDA, 1986).
26
Achille Fould, “École impériale des Beaux-Arts. Distribution des prix et
médailles décernées aux élèves de l’école pendant l’année 1854–55,” EdA 6
(1856): col. 3.
27
Bonnet, L’enseignement des arts au XIXe siècle, 153.
28
Hippolyte Fortoul, Journal d’Hippolyte Fortoul, ed. Geneviève Massa-Gille
(Genève: Droz, 1979), 123.
328 architecture and the historical imagination
29
Aside from the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the Institut de France comprised, as
it still does today, the Académie Française, the Académie des Inscriptions et
des Belles-Lettres, the Académie des Sciences, and the Académie des Sciences
morales et politiques.
30
Henri Rochefort, Le Nain jaune, January 13, 1864; quoted in Bonnet,
L’enseignement des arts au XIXe siècle, 156, n. 16.
31
Léon de Laborde, Exposition universelle de 1851. Travaux de la Commission
française sur l’industrie des nations publiés par ordre de l’Empereur. Application des
arts à l’industrie, 8 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1856), vol. 8, 679; this was
also published under the title De l’union des arts et de l’industrie, 2 vols. (Paris:
Imprimerie impériale, 1856).
32
These meetings and dates are inscribed in Labrouste’s agenda for that period,
Académie d’Architecture, Fonds Labrouste, file 5, sleeve 44. I thank Marc Le
Coeur for this information.
33
“Après vingt années, un maître éminent qui comptait nécessairement, parmi
plusieurs centaines d’élèves, des hommes d’un vrai mérite, n’a trouvé aucun
disciple qui pût continuer son oeuvre, et c’est à l’Académie de Rome, qu’il
a choisi son successeur. Noble avertissement, messieurs, pour les témérités
futures,” Charles-Ernest Beulé, “[Mouvement de l’art en France] Cours
d’archéologie de M. Beulé à la Bibliothèque impériale,” Revue générale de
l’architecture et des travaux publics, hereafter RGATP, 14 (1856): col. 381.
34
Adolphe Lance, “Un mot d’explication à l’adresse de MM. André et Questel,”
EdA 7 (February 1857): col. 21.
35
Henri Labrouste to an unidentified correspondent (Charles-Ernest Beulé?),
undated, Académie d’architecture, fonds Labrouste, file 11, sleeve 5.
36
See n. 32 above.
37
Robin Middleton, “Viollet-le-Duc’s Academic Ventures and the Entretiens sur
l’architecture”: Gottfried Semper und die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Eva BörschSupan (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1976), 248.
38
See Bonnet, L’enseignement des arts au XIXe siècle, 167–168.
39
See Bonnet, L’enseignement des arts au XIXe siècle, 163.
40
Viollet-le-Duc, “L’Enseignement des arts. Il y a quelque chose à faire,” Gazette
des Beaux-Arts 12 (May 1862): 393–402; (June 1862): 525–534; (July 1862): 71–82;
(September 1862): 249–255.
41
Viollet-le-Duc, “L’Enseignement des arts. Il y a quelque chose à faire,” Gazette
des Beaux-Arts 12 (1862): 528; quoted in Bonnet, L’enseignement des arts au XIXe
siècle, 181.
42
Bonnet, L’enseignement des arts au XIXe siècle, 183.
43
“En France l’enseignement des arts doit tendre, avant tout, à développer ces
individualités et à aider les esprits chercheurs, possédés du besoin d’exprimer ce
qu’ils croient avoir découvert,” Viollet-le-Duc, “L’Enseignement des arts. Il y a
quelque chose à faire,” 410.
44
Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, L’éducation de la mémoire pittoresque et la formation
de l’artiste (Paris, H. Laurens, 1913), 21. This edition brings together three
brochures published by Lecoq de Boisbaudran between 1847 and 1877.
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 329
45
Charles Baudelaire, “Le peintre de la vie moderne” (written 1859–60; published
in three installments in Le Figaro in late 1863), republished in Curiosités
esthétiques. L’art romantique et autres œuvres critiques, ed. Henri Lemaître (Paris:
Éditions Garnier Frères, 1962), 470 and 466.
46
“Laisse aux aptitudes [de l’artiste] leur fraîcheur native,” Viollet-le-Duc,
“L’Enseignement des arts. Il y a quelque chose à faire,” 527.
47
Bonnet, L’enseignement des arts au XIXe siècle, 185.
48
The teaching staff named by the minister included: Pierre-Charles Huguier in
anatomy, Léon Heuzay in history and archaeology (concentrating on Greek art
and ancient mythology), Auguste Chevillard in perspective, the famous Louis
Pasteur in geology, physics, and chemistry for architects (he soon resigned
due to lack of interest on the part of students), and of course, Viollet-le-Duc
in art history and aesthetics. Simon-Claude Constant-Dufeux, Alexis Paccard,
and Charles Laisné were the other professors of architecture. The painter and
theoretician of art, David Sutter, seems to have been the only one who took
advantage of the open chairs. He was selected to teach a course in general and
applied aesthetics on the topical issue of realism versus idealism, a post he held
for an extended number of years.
49
“Tant mieux, si votre conseil, mauvais à mon avis, se décompose et si quelques
traitres que vous aviez introduit dans votre camp quittent la place. Lefuel est
mauvais, c’est un faux bonhomme, il m’a suffi de le voir deux fois pour le juger
ainsi. Nieuwerkerke s’en était un peu coiffé et il avait bien tort, car, entre nous
Lefuel ne le ménageait pas. Gisors est faible, égoïste et se soucie des arts comme
de ses vieilles bottes. Tout cela ne vaut rien. Quand la guerre va éclater, je ne
connais rien de plus dangereux que de montrer ses plans à des gens qui demain
passeront évidemment à l’ennemi. D’un autre côté les membres de l’Académie
sont d’une maladresse en quittant la place, je ne leur aurais pas conseillé si j’étais
de leur bord. La révolution est commencée, et comme toutes les révolutions
elle ne peut plus s’arrêter. Nous en sommes à 88 au moment où les parlements
faisaient de l’opposition à la cour et étaient exilés à Troyes, l’Académie joue
le même jeu, mais est-ce les parlements qui ont profité et qui ont été les chefs
de la révolution? Ils sont tombés dans l’isolement après un peu de bruit. Si
nous jouons serré et si le Maréchal tient bon, nous avons la partie belle, mais
il faut franchement tracer les camps. Ceux-ci tracés nous verrons venir dans le
nôtre chaque jour de nouvelles recrues. … L’Académie Française et celle des
Inscriptions sont pour nous en majorité. … Si Lefuel et Gisors quittent le conseil,
moi, ministre, je nommerais des hommes comme Trélat, Lance, Daly, Vaudoyer
(s’il accepte), Laval, Lisch, des hommes en avant et bien élevés, incapables
… de vous trahir et de vous aider à faire des sottises. Des peintres, vous n’en
manquerez pas,” Viollet-le-Duc to Henri Courmont, December 31, 1863, MAP,
“Correspondance et rapports, 1863–64,” doc. 103.
50
Du Camp, Souvenirs d’un demi-siècle, vol. 1, 221–222, and John Summerson,
“Viollet-le-Duc and the Rational Point of View,” In Heavenly Mansions, and Other
Essays on Architecture (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963), 135–158. Summerson’s
famous essay was first published in 1949.
51
Du Camp, Souvenirs d’un demi-siècle, vol. 1, 221–222.
52
Hyacinthe Husson, “Ouverture des cours ‘d’histoire de l’art et d’esthétique’
et ‘d’histoire et d’archéologie’,” RGATP 22 (1864): col. 68. See also the
account by Viollet-le-Duc’s son confirming Husson’s version: “the hostility
[of the adversaries of the reform] could manifest itself only through latent
330 architecture and the historical imagination
demonstrations, safely keeping under cover the individuals responsible for it,”
Gazette des architectes et du bâtiment 1 (1863): 304.
53
Philippe Burty, La Presse, January 31, 1864.
54
Le Figaro, February 4, 1864.
55
Le Temps, January 31, 1864. The newspaper Le Temps was a supporter of the
reform, but since the Gautier story had no bearing on the issues debated, I see
no reason why they would want to cover it up.
56
“Dès la second séance, j’avais repris le dessus. Sur 300 assistants, après ma mise
en demeure par moi seul provoquée, une moitié s’était retirée environ, elle
croyait entraîner toute l’assemblée. Les 200 restants à peu près avaient écouté la
leçon avec applaudissements répétés, et m’acclamaient en sortant. L’affaire était
gagnée,” Viollet-le-Duc to Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, November 7, 1866,
MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1863–64,” doc. 131.
57
He published his recollections in Julien Guadet, “À l’École des Beaux-Arts.
Souvenirs de 1863,” S. A. D. G. Recueil publié à l’occasion de la millième adhésion à
la Société des architectes diplômés du gouvernement (Paris: Librairie de l’Architecte,
1911), 25.
58
Viollet-le-Duc to Prosper Mérimée, Lettres inédites de Viollet-le-Duc recueillies et
annotées par son fils (Paris: Librairies-imprimeries réunies, 1902), hereafter LIV, 52.
59
Fortoul, Journal d’Hippolyte Fortoul, 124.
60
Monseigneur Félix Dupanloup, Avertissement à la jeunesse et aux pères de famille
sur les attaques dirigées contre la religion par quelques écrivains de nos jours (Paris:
Douniol, 1863). On the forceful reaction, see Johann Heilbron, “Sociologie et
positivisme en France au XIXe siècle: les vicissitudes de la Société de sociologie,”
Revue française de sociologie 48 (2007): 307–331.
61
César Daly, L’architecture privée au XIXe sous Napoléon III, 3 vols. (Paris: A. Morel
et Cie., 1864), vol. 1, 15, n. 1.
62
Husson, “Ouverture des cours ‘d’histoire de l’art et d’esthétique’ et ‘d’histoire et
d’archéologie’,” cols. 68–70.
63
See Georges Radet, L’histoire et l’oeuvre de l’école française d’Athènes (Paris:
A. Fontemoing 1901).
64
Ludovic Vitet, “Les arts du dessin en France,” La Revue des Deux Mondes 54
(November 1864): 94–95.
65
Jules Janin, Journal des débats (November 27, 1854), in a review of Henry the
Second: or, the Fall of Rosamond, by M. Latour de Saint-Ybars.
66
See Charles Ridoux, Évolution des études médiévales en France (Paris:
Champion, 2001), 78ff.
67
Ernest Renan, “L’art du moyen âge et les causes de sa décadence,” Oeuvres
complètes de Ernest Renan, 10 vols. (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1947), vol. 2, 488–489.
68
Michelet would be critical of Viollet-le-Duc, particularly because of his affiliation
with the regime of Napoleon III. See Laurence Richer, La cathédrale de feu:
le moyen âge de Michelet, de l’histoire au mythe (Angers: Presse de l’université
d’Angers, 1995), 228.
69
Jules Michelet, Bible de l’humanité (Paris: Chamerot, 1864), 483.
war rue bonaparte: 1856–1864 331
70
In this case, Viollet-le-Duc is referring to Renan and Taine’s ideas about the
Gothic, not Michelet specifically; see MAP, n. 237, “pages inédites” bound at the
end of the volume, “Correspondance et rapports, pages inédites, 1879.”
71
Viollet-le-Duc to Prosper Mérimée, Paris, April 12, 1864, LIV, 53.
72
Albert Boime, “The Teaching Reforms of 1863 and the Origins of Modern Arts,”
The Art Quarterly 1 (Fall 1977): 1–39; see also his The Academy and French Painting
in the 19th Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972).
73
“La révolution est assez avancée pour qu’on ne puisse plus retourner en
arrière,” Viollet-le-Duc to Prosper Mérimée, Paris, April 12, 1864, LIV, 51.
74
“Car il est bon que l’Académie le sache et s’y attende: si le pouvoir revient à elle,
il lui faudra de son côté faire plus d’un pas. … C’est le propre des révolutions
que, même à l’heure où se répare leurs fautes, quand on retranche ce qu’elles
ont fait de trop, il faut encore laisser survivre une partie de ce qu’elles ont fait,”
Louis Vitet, “De l’enseignement des arts du dessin,” Revue des Deux Mondes
(November 1, 1864): 107.
75
“Quand la guerre va éclater, je ne connais rien de plus dangereux que de
montrer ses plans à des gens qui demain passeront évidemment à l’ennemi.
… La révolution est commencée, et comme toutes les révolutions elle ne peut
plus s’arrêter. Nous en sommes à 88 au moment où les parlements faisaient de
l’opposition à la cour et étaient exilés à Troyes, l’Académie joue le même jeu,
mais est-ce les parlements qui ont profité et qui ont été les chefs de la révolution?
Ils sont tombés dans l’isolement après un peu de bruit. Si nous jouons serré et
si le Maréchal tient bon, nous avons la partie belle, mais il faut franchement
tracer les camps. … La situation se dessine, et j’aime cela, n’oublions pas que
les révolutions ne se compromettent que par les concessions aux forces ralliées.
Carnot était un grand homme et Robespierre bien qu’arrogant avait de l’esprit
de conduite comme révolutionnaire. Si Napoléon n’avait pas tant choyé les
marquis de l’Ancien régime peut-être serait-il mort aux Tuileries. Mais pour
Dieu répondons à Beulé. … Si nous sommes habiles et si nos chefs ne lâchent
pas pied, d’ici six mois l’Académie en sera à se morfondre et à tomber sur
Beulé comme l’ayant compromis. Quoi qu’on fasse, … il faut qu’une révolution
s’arrange; donc le mieux est de la diriger,” Viollet-le-Duc to Henri Courmont,
December 31, 1863, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1863–64,” doc. 103.
76
“Nous avons eu aujourd’hui notre bataille d’Austerlitz. Fausse manoeuvre de
nos ennemis, charge à fond et victoire complète. La 4e classe de l’Institut a vécu.
Tâchez que la vôtre voit de longs jours,” Viollet-le-Duc to Charles-Augustin
Sainte-Beuve, February 5, 1864, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1863–64,”
doc. 131.
77
Viollet-le-Duc, “Réponse à M. Beulé,” Le Moniteur universel, January 1864; I
quote from the manuscript, MAP, “Correspondance et rapports, 1863–64,” doc.
116.
78
Viollet-le-Duc, Entretiens sur l’architecture, 2 vols. (Paris: A. Morel et Cie.,
1863–1872), hereafter EA, vol. 1, 246.
79
Viollet-le-Duc, EA, vol. 1, 248.
80
Viollet-le-Duc, EA, vol. 1, 247.
81
“La jeunesse inaltérable de ces nobles races primitives,” and “ces forces
contraires, productrices ou destructrices, qui animent la nature,” Viollet-le-Duc,
“Cours professés par Viollet-le-Duc à l’École des Beaux-Arts,” Revue des cours
littéraires de la France et de l’étranger 1 (1864), 150 and 154.
This page has been left blank intentionally
10
Instinct and Race
Instinct and Memory
The late 1850s and early 1860s comprised an important juncture in Violletle-Duc’s career, not only because of his efforts at pedagogical reform, but
also because of his publishing ventures—the latter complementing and
making up for the lack of success of the former. Writing a good dozen
articles every year and still busy composing the Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture, Viollet-le-Duc produced an extended essay on pre-Columbian
architecture in 1861 (published in 1863) and a series of brief monographs on
various monuments. Even more importantly, he launched simultaneously
the parallel enterprises of the Entretiens sur l’architecture and the Dictionnaire
raisonné du mobilier français de l’époque carlovingienne à la Renaissance in 1858.
The latter was a natural extension of the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture.
Now focusing on medieval furniture, clothing, tools, and arms, studying in
detail no less than 60 items of furniture in the first volume alone, Viollet-leDuc tried to grasp the intimate customs and daily habits of that era. He wrote
the first volume very quickly in 1858, producing his usual set of woodcuts
inserted into the text, but adding this time a few separate engraved plates
and chromolithographs. The remaining five volumes of that ambitious
enterprise would have to wait after 1871, when his activities as restoration
architect slowed down.
Notwithstanding the importance of the two Dictionnaires raisonnés, the
Entretiens sur l’architecture, published between 1858 and 1872,1 was the most
far-reaching in architectural terms. The Entretiens constituted an expansion
of his usual field of historical investigation, now spanning the entire history
of Western architecture, including significant reflections on primitive art.
According to Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Viollet-le-Duc hoped to shed
his reputation as an exclusive Gothicist by proving himself a man of taste (“en
faisant ses preuves d’homme de goût”).2 The expression “man of taste” may refer
to the fact that here he dealt for the first time with classical architecture and
with aesthetic issues, yet the Entretiens remains above all a broad historical
reflection, recasting the Gothic within a general theory of architectural
334 architecture and the historical imagination
evolution. Even if the structure is somewhat informal, the Entretiens is Violletle-Duc’s greatest effort at defining a complete system. The first volume
defined the nature of historical progress, while the second, almost completed
at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, presented the consequence of that
evolution for the present.
The first “Entretien,” which appeared in January 1858, prepares the ground
for the whole enterprise. It begins with an anthropological definition of art
founded on instinct and will. “Art,” he writes, “is an instinct, a necessity of the
mind.”3 It stems from an internal urge particularly active in primitive people.4
Art has thus nothing to do with taste or the refinements of civilization:
primitive, superstitious, fanatical nations can produce great art, while a
tolerant, moderate, policed civilization can have only a mediocre one. “Art’s
value is independent of the milieu in which it is born.” The question is,
therefore, not to determine if “an historical period is more or less civilized, or
more or less barbarian, but if it is more or less favorable to art.”5
Divorcing the value of art from the degree of civilization was a means for
Viollet-le-Duc to defuse from the outset the most common criticism leveled
against the Gothic, namely, that it is the art of a barbarous historical period.
For instance, the year the first “Entretien” was published, the Académie
des Beaux-Arts reviewed and endorsed the second volume of Léonce
Reynaud’s Traité d’architecture, noting with approval the latter’s dismissal
of medieval architecture: Reynaud opposed “the gentleness of our manners
and institutions with the period of sadness and suffering of which Gothic
architecture bears the imprint.”6 Viollet-le-Duc replied in the Gazette des
Beaux-Arts: “You say that the sadness of Gothic architecture is a reflection
of the time. So make sure that a period is cheery, and its architecture will
make us die laughing.”7 He went on to mock the Académie for reviving the
old battle against the Gothic, which, he claimed, had been fought and settled
back in 1846. “The Académie,” writes Viollet-le-Duc, “awakens from a sleep
of twelve years; but, like Sleeping Beauty, it awakens without having aged
a single day, and everything to its eyes are the way things appeared in June
1846.”8
The light tone Viollet-le-Duc adopts here should not lead us to
underestimate the anti-Gothic sentiment that sprang up during the Second
Empire. Apart from the decisive anathema expressed by Ernest Renan and
Jules Michelet (Hippolyte Taine would soon follow),9 there had been a
resurgence of taste for the grand style français since the very beginning of the
regime. Hector-Martin Lefuel’s new Louvre is the key monument to the new
taste, its rich ornamentation serving as a model for countless commercial
and private buildings in Paris, France, and beyond. Ludovic Vitet, critical
of everything associated with the reign of Napoleon III, would label the
trend an “ornamentist fever”: “at once stingy and luxurious, industrial and
grand seigneur.”10 But even the men most troubled by such fever, like Léon
de Laborde and César Daly, still drew from the grand siècle to initiate a
reform, the refinements of court society being considered the repository of
instinct and race 335
taste. The arguments put forward by Laborde and Daly were of course not so
straightforward, but in Viollet-le-Duc’s eyes, they did perpetuate Beaux-Arts
conventions.
Viollet-le-Duc’s apologia for the primitive in the first “Entretien” stands
against this appeal to French civilizing graces. His most immediate source was
Prosper Mérimée, from whose correspondence Viollet-le-Duc borrowed key
passages.11 His valorization of will and pride is indeed worthy of the author
of Colomba (1840): “Cruelty is an instinct of human nature which civilization
succeeds more or less in suppressing,” writes Viollet-le-Duc in the opening
page of the first “Entretien.” “History gives us only too many examples of
acts of cruelty committed by nations among which the arts had reached their
highest degree of perfection.”12 It is a barely disguised defense of savagery,
very much in line with Mérimée’s fascination with primitive human instinct.
“Remember,” writes Mérimée in an often-quoted passage of a letter to Jenny
Dacquin, “that there is nothing more common than doing something bad just
for the pleasure of doing it.” “We are in this world to fight in the face of all
opposition.”13 The last portion of this quote could well serve as a motto for
Viollet-le-Duc’s whole career. It is certainly a fitting prelude to his description
of the basic form of the artistic impulse:
A man of greater intelligence and strength than his neighbors has killed a lion; he
hangs its skin over the doorway of the cave he inhabits. This commemorative spoil
perishes: he therefore cuts in the stone, as best he can, something that resembles a
lion, so that his children and his neighbors may preserve the remembrance of his
strength and courage. But he wishes this sign, destined to perpetuate the memory of
his valor, to be seen from afar, to attract notice. He has observed that red is the most
striking of all colors; he therefore daubs his sculptured lion with red. To all who see
this image it plainly says: “Here is the dwelling of the strong man who knows how to
defend himself and his own.” This is art. Here it exists entire, complete, needing only
to perfect its means of execution.14
A pride in man’s own strength is the fundamental element of the artistic
urge. But the impulse does not merely reflect pride: it reaches toward the
Promethean and the sacred. A few pages after the passage just quoted,
Viollet-le-Duc makes that dimension explicit with a second example, this time
emphasizing the transgressive character of primitive art:
Will the savage distinguish between a statue by Phidias and a block of stone that
pretty closely resembles man? No. … This block, shapeless though it may be, is in his
eyes a superior being: he endows it with feelings, he fears it, he sees it in his dreams,
he sees it in battles; his imagination gives it form and passion. If the savage is a Hindu
or an Egyptian, he will soon aspire to render his god in material form such as his
imagination depicts him. An imitation of the beings with whom he is familiar will not
satisfy him. What purpose would a mere copy of nature serve? To achieve his ideal,
he puts an animal’s head on the body of a man, gives his god ten arms, and paints
him red or blue. He has been struck with the haughty, noble, or fierce expression of
some bird of prey; he takes the main features and exaggerates them; he instinctively
exceeds the lineaments nature has traced, and he places this head upon the body of
his god of battle. No one thinks of objecting, and the myth is accepted by all.
336 architecture and the historical imagination
This instinctive craving, which impels men to make idols, must be defined: it arises
from a combination of ideas:
1. There is the attachment we feel to the product of our own skill and labor, the vanity
that accompanies a sense of creation;
2. The idea of special sanctity which the object acquires by consecration;
3. The consciousness of having embodied the idea of divinity in creating something
that transcends nature.
The Hindu who has made a monster with an elephant’s head and ten arms, is
persuaded that the object he has produced is supernatural, and consequently divine.
His neighbors, upon beholding this idol, will experience a feeling of dread: to them
it will be the expression of the power of divinity. All nations have begun by making
monstrosities before attempting to imitate nature.15
10.1 E.-E.
Viollet-leDuc. Head of
a gargoyle,
Sainte-Chapelle.
Graphite. 16.6 ×
12.5 cm. MAP.
© Ministère
de la Culture /
Médiathèque du
Patrimoine, Dist.
RMN-Grand
Palais / Art
Resource, NY
The last sentence is lifted from comments Mérimée made on a first draft of
the same “Entretien.” Mérimée’s words completed and augmented Violletle-Duc’s argument that art’s primordial motivation was the appropriation
of nature’s hidden powers, generating “une création de second ordre,” new
hybrid creatures of supernatural character.16 It was only through the
creation of something extraordinary that man could capture nature’s forces.
Transgression was the source of the consecration.
Viollet-le-Duc himself was an avid creator of monstrosities, including
parades of extraordinary grotesques in nearly all his restorations (Fig. 10.1).
He was reviving a medieval practice, but his extraordinary creativity and
obvious delight in making these monsters have long been recognized. His
series of 54 chimeras circling the upper galleries
of the towers of Notre-Dame has recently been
the subject of a whole monograph in which
Michael Camille rightfully positions these
grotesques as proper expressions of nineteenthcentury modernity rather than sham Gothic
ornament.17 Camille did not, however,
investigate how transgression stood at the
heart of Viollet-le-Duc’s theory of creativity.
The procession of monsters embodies the
demonic, like the Hindu idol, except that
its power is not restrained by the bounds of
religious ritual, but rather is unleashed into the
modern metropolis. Notre-Dame as restored
by Viollet-le-Duc was a consecration of that
modern power—the monsters encircling its
crown or jutting out from its bristling surface
reminded the nineteenth-century public that
the productive energies of the great city were at
once archaic and dangerous (Fig. 10.2, and see
instinct and race 337
10.2 E.-E.
Viollet-le-Duc.
Gargoyles at
the top of the
south tower of
Notre-Dame,
Paris. Photo by
the author
Figs. 3.3 and 15.6). Much of the decorative program at Notre-Dame expresses
that sort of pagan vitality, from the strikingly demonic figure of Christ for the
maître-autel (Fig. 10.3) and the exuberance of
Viollet-le-Duc’s studies for monstrances (Fig.
10.4), to the monstrous character of the famous
lectern for the main altar (Fig. 10.5).
If the making of monstrosities is at the
origin of art, the emergence of Greek art and
the rise of naturalism remained the most
crucial stages in its history, according to
Viollet-le-Duc. However, the presence of a
“transgressive” ferment is still perceptible
through the naturalizing or idealizing veil.
Picking up yet another suggestion from
Mérimée, Viollet-le-Duc gives the example of
the mask of the Gorgon: “The Greeks ended by
making of the hideous Gorgon’s head a mask
of surpassing beauty; yet the sculptor always
10.3 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Figure of Christ
for the Maître-Hotel at Notre-Dame, Paris. 1866.
Graphite, wash and gouache. 92.5 × 59.5 cm.
Collection Poussièlgue-Rusand, MAP. © Ministère
de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
338 architecture and the historical imagination
(above) 10.4 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Study for a
monstrance. Graphite and ink. 84.5 × 43.5 cm.
Undated. Collection Poussièlgue-Rusand, MAP. ©
Ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
(below) 10.5 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Lectern for
Notre-Dame. 1868. Watercolor and ink. 65.0 × 48.5
cm. MAP. Photo: Daniel Arnaudet. © Ministère
de la Culture / Médiathèque du Patrimoine,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
kept the same goal in view, that of inspiring
dread.”18 The example is significant coming
from Mérimée, who made the containment of
savagery the leading theme of his novellas. Both
Carmen (1845) and Colomba are about the sudden
eruption of unrestrained primitive forces within
a civilized setting. La Vénus d’Ille (1835), and his
last short story, Lokis (1869), both push the theme
into the realm of the fantastic. La Vénus d’Ille is
a particularly interesting variation on the theme
of the Gorgon mask. The story revolves around
the discovery of an antique statue of Venus on
the grounds of a provincial bourgeois estate.
It is an exceptionally beautiful, yet strangely
cruel-looking sculpture of black metal: “There
is something ferocious in her expression, and
yet I have never seen anything so beautiful.”19
Local peasants quickly grow convinced that this
pagan love goddess is responsible for a series of
odd accidents in the neighborhood. The story
takes a dramatic turn during the wedding of
the landowner’s son, who, having unknowingly
betrothed the mysterious statue the very day of
his marriage by sliding his wedding ring onto the
statue’s fingers before playing a game of paume,
is found dead in bed the following morning,
crushed by a deadly embrace. A wild-tempered
man with whom the son had quarreled during
the game is accused of the murder; yet everything
in the story hints at the fact that it was the black
Venus who, jealous of the bride, stepped down
from her pedestal at night and slipped into the
groom’s room to exact a deadly revenge. The
short story, which Mérimée believed to be his
most accomplished, is a masterpiece of the
instinct and race 339
fantastic genre, keeping a perfect balance between the banal everyday life
of a slightly ridiculous nineteenth-century French bourgeois household,
and the demonic potential of a pagan Venus. For the first time, Mérimée
adopted a realistic stance, setting his story in the good bourgeois age of
Louis-Philippe instead of his usual exotic or historical mise-en-scène. The tale
illustrates with exceptional clarity the conjunction of love and death, central
to the “Romantic agony,” as Frank Paul Bowman noted.20 Literary historians
have drawn from a long list of ancient and medieval legends to identify
Mérimée’s probable sources. But they do not mention the more scholarly
essay “Étude de la religion phrygienne de Cybèle,” by Mérimée’s close
friend, the archaeologist Charles Lenormant, published a year before La
Vénus d’Ille appeared. Yet the essay was an extensive study of the primitive
Oriental ferment of ancient Greek mythology which Lenormant associated
with the goddess Cybèle, a “rebellious virgin and enemy of marriage,”
whose love comes with acts of violence wedded to the forces of death.21
It was a highly philosophical study, inspired by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
Schelling’s arcane concept of the bond (lien), which held that all entities in
the world are the product of “a law of cohesion” maintained “by the force
and the persistence of a bond.” Any creative act, understood in terms of a
sexual model, must do violence to the original bond in order to generate a
new one. Mérimée, who thought Lenormant’s essay was the final word on
years of research on primitive cults,22 must have had the cruel Cybèle in
mind when writing La Venus d’Ille, with the symbol of the ring expressing
Schelling’s notion of the bond. From a literary point of view, the story was
itself an essay on the tying and untying of the real, the reader being constantly
held in suspense between competing interpretations of the narrative. The
fantastic genre, perfectly suited to Mérimée’s ironic disposition, ensured
that the reader was constantly in touch with the act of writing.
I insist upon Mérimée’s fantastic story because, in the first “Entretien,”
Viollet-le-Duc described that very type of literary production as a model to
explain how we moderns can appropriate the transgressive power that he
associated with primitive idols:
Are we to suppose that such creations [like the centaur] belong only to primitive
culture? Does not art exercise its functions in our day by embodying fictions? … You
are a poet or a novelist, for example: you wish to lend reality to a fable; you imagine
something impossible, a ghost, for instance, but you know that your readers do not
believe in ghosts; how then will you contrive to make the story gain such a hold upon
their minds as to leave an impression of a real event? You will take pains to describe
the locality of the fiction, to give an air of reality to every detail; you will draw a
picture in which every object shall have a palpable form, each of the dramatis personae
a clear and definite physiognomy and character; in short, you will leave nothing
vague or undefined; and when your scene is thus prepared, and your readers are
drawn into it and made actors in your drama, you will introduce your apparition.
Then, all that would otherwise have seemed improbable in your story will assume an
aspect of reality striking in proportion to the fidelity of nature which characterized
your preliminary descriptions. This is art.23
340 architecture and the historical imagination
Mérimée himself had described the process in his usual succinct fashion:
“When telling the story of something supernatural,” he wrote in 1848, “one
can never include too many of the details of material reality. This is the
grand art of [E. T. A.] Hoffmann.”24 The key to the subterfuge is the creation
of an effect of vraisemblance, the absolute fidelity to nature that leads to the
crossing of the threshold. The process, in Viollet-le-Duc’s mind, entails a true
understanding of human nature and perception, even if the end goal is to
transgress the reality portrayed. This is why Viollet-le-Duc feels justified in
placing reason (or instinct, in the case of primitive people) at the center of
artistic expression: “Imagination would produce only vague and shapeless
dreams if man did not possess a regulator within, which forces him to give
to his fancies the semblance of reality. This regulator is his reason.”25 Only
reason—nourished by empirical observation—is capable of transforming
the monster into a viable being, and, eventually, the horrible Gorgon into a
beautiful mask. This is the meaning of Viollet-le-Duc’s so-called “rationalism”:
the capacity to give an air of reality to, or to make natural, the supernatural
products of our imagination. Reason is defined in the sixth “Entretien” as the
“active imagination,” as opposed to the “passive,” which is the depository
of (poetic) memories. The active imagination is the power that can untie the
cohesion of the world in order to construct a new reality from the memories
presented to the mind by the passive imagination. As a “regulator,” reason
is a process, but in the sense of an obstetric power akin to nature’s eternally
creative force. It calls forth Ruskin’s famous distinction between the “True
and False Griffins” presented in volume three of Modern Painters. The sculptor
of the successful griffin, claimed Ruskin, had an intensified perception of life
within the natural world, which allowed him to create a true hybrid creature,
at once “fully eagle and fully lion.” For Ruskin, the heightened perception was
due to acute observation of nature born from a sense of reverence. In Violletle-Duc’s case, it was the product of an instinct, an inner drive of Promethean
nature.
We get a clearer sense of such Promethean leanings by returning briefly
to Viollet-le-Duc’s example of the red lion. The icon was a well-known
alchemical hieroglyph,26 part of Nicolas Flamel’s repertoire of figures painted
in the fourth arcade of the old Holy Innocents’ Cemetery in Paris, according
to the seventeenth-century Latin manuscript Liber figurarum hieroglyphicarum
Nicolai Flamelli scriptoris.27 We know Viollet-le-Duc was well versed in
alchemical symbolism, since he inserted the classic figure of alchemy at eyelevel, below the figure of “le Christ enseignant,” in the central pier of the central
portal of Notre-Dame, a curious element of the restoration convincingly
interpreted by the French iconographer Jacques Chailley.28 Chailley interprets
Viollet-le-Duc’s decision as “une assez bonne plaisanterie,” made to challenge
orthodox Catholicism. Defiance and humor were certainly motivations. But
to interpret the iconic presence of alchemy in the central portal as a mere joke
would discount Viollet-le-Duc’s belief that the Gothic cathedral expresses the
human dream to animate dead matter. His notion of an active and a passive
instinct and race 341
imagination, though faithful to Voltaire’s classic definition in the Dictionnaire
philosophique, was above all a transposition of the active and passive principles
central to alchemy.29 The red lion, within alchemical symbolism, represents
the active force in the form of the fire’s devouring activity.30 So Viollet-leDuc’s primitive hunter who sculpted his lion was not only showing off his
courage and skill, he was creating one of the key symbols of an ancient science
celebrating nature’s raw energy.
The example of the red lion is also interesting as it presents ab ovo the
theme of the union of the arts that runs throughout the first “Entretien,” and
culminates with the story of Viollet-le-Duc’s Notre-Dame panic. The hunter
carves a lion in stone, and then paints it red to insure that it will strike the eye.
Following his death, his family builds a funerary monument carving the scene
of a lion hunt over the doorway. Uniting sculpture, painting and architecture,
explains Viollet-le-Duc, the monument solicits all creative faculties in order
to “fix” memory. Since he saw artistic process as akin to nature’s creative
power, it was inevitable that Viollet-le-Duc would turn to the theme of the
synthesis of the arts. True creation must stem from a unified mental power
where all sensations converge. The theme had been prevalent in Romantic
aesthetic writings in France since at least the 1830s, especially Saint-Simonian,
Fourierist, or Neo-Catholic works where the issues of spiritual unity and
social cohesion were at the forefront. Comte Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon,
Charles Fourier, Philippe Buchez, Jean Leroux, Barthélemy-Prosper Enfantin,
Henri-François-Alphonse Esquiros, Hugue-Felicité-Robert de Lamennais—
to name only the most famous in a long list—were devoted proponents of
the synthesis of the arts. Victor Considérant’s widely-read Considérations
sociales sur l’architectonique (1834) is another example: Considérant summoned
artists to unify under the architectonic banner to build a total work of art of
cosmological (and alchemical) dimensions: “We must harmonize water, fire,
light, granite, and metals: Art will hold in its powerful hands all the elements
in order to wed them together; it will be a creation!”31
Most interestingly in the case of Viollet-le-Duc, the concept was in the
service of an art of memory: uniting the arts insured that the work would
take full hold of the human mind, as did the red lion. In his Introduction à une
science de l’histoire, Buchez had made it a physiological principle: “Generally
speaking, a work becomes art when one or another form of human passion
breathes within it. But the principle … of synthesis is something else all
together; the entire work [of art] must become man, man conceived in terms
of his highest form of expression, so that the idea [la pensée] of the work is
present in its unity to seize the spiritual self, and, simultaneously, dressed
in all the elements of a carnal expression, to seize the sympathetic nervous
system.”32 Not only did the work so conceived facilitate remembrance, it
also touched upon secret affinities of highly symbolic value, akin to the
principles of the Renaissance art of memory. Pierre Leroux gave that idea its
classic formulation in a celebrated passage of his essay De la poésie de notre
époque of 1831.33
342 architecture and the historical imagination
Viollet-le-Duc may well have known Leroux’s famous text, but it is in the
writings of the defenders of l’art chrétien that we find the closest precedent
for his discussion of the unity of the arts. Its fullest expression comes in
the third volume of Lamennais’ Esquisse d’une philosophie, where the wellknown argument about the temple as the expression of God’s creative power
culminates with the lyrical description of a nocturnal experience in a cathedral:
Imagine yourself, at sunset, in the immense Christian cathedral. … With the last
glimmer of light, the night extinguishes the last sounds; a mysterious silence envelops
you on all sides. Outside yourself, muted darkness; inside, the invisible breath of
an unknown power that irresistibly penetrates and overtakes you. Deprived of
any sensory stimulus, a strange work takes place inside you; spirits pass before
your internal eye, ghosts without bodies inhabit your imagination; time, no longer
measurable, seems to have evaporated all on its own. Suddenly, in the distance, a
luminous point appears, then another, and another; you begin to distinguish the
building mass, walls like the side of a steep mountain, the sharp ridge at the corners,
the curvature of the arcs, the enormous pendentives. The light increases: on these
harmonious masses appear plants, animals, and innumerable forms of beings, coming
forth out of their inexhaustibly fertile loins. Sparkling with thousands of colors whose
reflections cross and merge, they bring to your senses a revelation of life. … When, in
the midst of this newborn world, suddenly vibrates the voice of the organ, by turns
majestic, soft, severe, filling with its infinitely varied harmonies the quivering vaults,
wouldn’t we think that we are hearing the voice of all these beings whose creation we
just witnessed?34
Lamennais’ cathedral appears as a scintillating diorama of the entire creation,
a supernatural phenomenon worthy of fantastic literature. His description
of the church’s harmonious mass where “appear plants, animals, and
innumerable forms of beings, coming forth out of their inexhaustibly fertile
loins” would apply very well to Viollet-le-Duc’s work at Notre-Dame,
which made the cathedral iridescent with crochets, fleurons and overflowing
with various monstrous creatures (Figs. 10.2 and 10.6). Lamennais insisted
that the temple generated a special union of the senses—sight and hearing
being linked by “a secret connection.”35 The comparison between Lamennais’
lyrical description and the tale of Viollet-le-Duc’s childhood panic in NotreDame is tempting. Virtually all the elements intersect: a darkened interior,
the apparition of colored lights, the sudden sound of the organ leading to
an experience of synesthesia, and an architectural animation whereby the
cathedral itself appears to be emitting sound. Viollet-le-Duc’s childhood
memory, which we have understood up to this point as a “private” moment,
gains significance by being inscribed within a history of representation of the
cathedral.
Viollet-le-Duc of course knew the celebrated passage from Lamennais.
Just before relating the Notre-Dame incident in the first “Entretien,”
he writes about the capacity of the Middle Ages, like Ancient Greece, to
unite in one place all the various expressions of art in order “to produce a
single feeling, a homogenous emotion”: “they raised those grand churches
in which the sight of imposing ceremonies, the sound of music, and the
instinct and race 343
voice of the orator all seemed to unite in directing the mind toward one
thought.”36 But Viollet-le-Duc turns to his own purpose the totalizing effect.
Removing all religious connotations, he places emphasis on the purely
psychological and physiological phenomena. Before relating the NotreDame episode, he made a series of observations on the subjective effect of
music, and then of various forms of architecture: “long horizontal lines, low
or lofty ceilings, a dark or brilliantly lit chamber, will give rise to emotions
of a quite different nature.”37 It is when these diverse forms of art are
brought together in harmony that “they produce the most vivid and lasting
impression which the thinking being has been given to experience.”38 And
when he relates his childhood panic, he transforms Lamennais’ mystical
symbolism into a singular, private experience. In this manner, the mystical
effect described by Lamennais becomes psychology. But, unknowingly,
Viollet-le-Duc preserved some of the mysticism of Lamennais by relating an
early childhood experience, substituting the powers of the unconscious for
the divine trance.
Viollet-le-Duc is not the only one to have transformed Lamennais’ Christian
aesthetic into a secular psychology of art. In the widely read Grammaire des
arts du dessin (1860–1866), Charles Blanc extensively paraphrased the same
passage from the Esquisse, followed by similar observations about music
and architecture’s capacities to move the spectator.39 What sets Viollet-leDuc apart from Blanc, however, is that his aesthetic concerns could not be
conceived outside of an historical inquiry. In this regard, the Entretiens was
somewhat outmoded in comparison with the more philosophical writings
on art emerging at the time. César Daly criticized Viollet-le-Duc on that
point: “Science concludes, philosophy concludes also, but history only tells;
and telling is not enough for a course on aesthetics and the history of art.”40
Daly was of course making reference to Viollet-le-Duc’s aborted lectures
at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1864, but the same comment could be made
about the first volume of the Entretiens, entirely framed around the history
of architecture. By the 1860s, many felt that history was no longer enough.
Reynaud had already set an example by adopting the form of the treatise. The
majority of writers in architecture and the decorative arts of the last quarter of
the century would also turn to a more scientific mode of writing.
For Viollet-le-Duc, however, it was inconceivable to think outside of history.
The principles discussed in the first “Entretien” must indeed be seen in the
context of the overall series, which forms essentially a history of architecture.
Art itself was born from an act of remembrance. “Art’s destination,” he
writes in the first “Entretien,” “is to commemorate an event, such as the
birth of a child, the death of a father or of a wife, or a victory gained over an
enemy.” This observation is far-reaching. In a decisive passage of the sixth
“Entretien,” in which he sought to define his notion of style for the first time,
Viollet-le-Duc explains how the creative process is an operation of memory.
Following his assertion that architecture cannot be based on pure invention,
he describes the principle of formation of a new architecture by telling the
344 architecture and the historical imagination
story of a hypothetical barbarian who visits ancient Rome and, stunned by
the magnificence of its monuments, returns home with the firm intention of
recreating it:
His uncultivated memory recalls these edifices, and the sculptures and paintings that
adorn them. … The objects as he remembers them assume strange forms, like those
which pass in dreams. The great ones become gigantic: if he has seen large masses
lifted by powerful machines, these machines are transformed into monstrous beings;
the sculptures are animated; the paintings look and speak. On returning to his native
country, he calls up his memories. His passive imagination is feverishly excited, he
too will build; but his active imagination sleeps, and from so many lively and poetical
impressions it will barely help him to produce crude buildings in which everything is
confused, misplaced.41
Yet it is from such crude building, the product of animated and deformed
memories, that a new architecture will be born. The poetic distortions of a
fevered imagination brought back an insubstantial apparition to which the
active imagination will eventually give flesh. That is the transformative
process basic to the historical evolution of architectural forms.
The re-enactment of the past for the benefit of the present is of course
the leading theme of Viollet-le-Duc’s life work, reviving in modern France
the spirit of medieval builders. It is significant that Viollet-le-Duc chose the
ghost story as the model for the modern artists’ task of giving life to fictions:
ghosts are indeed revenants from the past. The year after the first “Entretien”
appeared, Viollet-le-Duc published two consecutive articles in the Gazette des
Beaux-Arts in which the ghost of Villard visits Viollet-le-Duc’s study in two
“apparitions”:
I suddenly felt a tap upon my shoulder; I turned around with a shiver (because
when one is alone at night in one’s study—everybody around sleeping—a tap on the
shoulder is certain to cause some agitation). So I turned around and found a tall old
man dressed in a grey gown with a leather belt around the waist; his intelligent eyes,
his good-natured physiognomy, his curly grey hair sticking out in thick strands from
under a small green hood did not give him the air of a revenant; he stretched out to
me an obviously alive, nervous hand: “Touch here,” he said with a strong Picardian
accent (yet ghosts never speak with a Picardian accent). “I am Villard de Honnecourt,
and I come to talk to you, because artists from all epochs must know each other and
learn to get along; we do not die in relation to one another [ils ne meurent pas les uns
pour les autres]; to prove it, I am here, in the best of health.”42
Viollet-le-Duc resorts to his recipe for a successful ghost story, giving lots
of realistic details to render his phantom real: “Ghosts never speak with a
Picardian accent,” he wrote. “Touch here,” are Villard’s first words, seeking
to make palpable the relation to the past. And the “first apparition” ended
with the emphatic statement: “If artists work for the living, they must live
with the dead. Because it is only from the latter that they can learn.”43 What
the “dead” offer is not so much knowledge as a “bond between the past and
the present, following many centuries of indifference and neglect.”44 In his
“second apparition,” the ghost of Villard demanded from Viollet-le-Duc,
instinct and race 345
“an act of justice,”45 wanting to set the record straight about the so-called
“French Renaissance.” The architectural argument is not so important—
Viollet-le-Duc reiterates what he has argued elsewhere. The sense of “debt”
that is transmitted is what is most captivating. This establishes a haunting
relation with history: Villard came back because something from the past
was not settled. This feeling of “indebtedness” can be related to the plight
of successive generations in the throes of revolutions and traumatic social
reorganizations, incapable of synthesizing the past into the present. But the
phenomenon had a special grip on Viollet-le-Duc because it related so much
to his own case of pathological mourning, product of an unsettled history.
It is useful to recall how the psychoanalysts Abraham and Torok described
the “pathological” solution to that unresolved past by the building of a crypt
inside the self, in which the lost object is “buried alive” as a full-fledged person
“reconstituted from the memories of words, scenes, and affects.” They related
how “sometimes in the dead of the night, when libidinal fulfillments have
their way, the ghost of the crypt comes back to haunt the cemetery guard,
imparting strange and incomprehensible signs, causing him to perform
bizarre acts, or subjecting him to unexpected sensations.”46 The synthesis of
the arts is here tied to trauma. Like the Gorgon mask, horror is imbedded
within beauty, as whatever is received by descent or succession is always at
risk to return in the form of a phantom to tax the living. In order to master
the haunting specter, Viollet-le-Duc will resort to a new concept, one that will
serve to name and thus control the revenant: the notion of race. His interest
in racial theories arose after his father’s death, when the issue of lineage and
family inheritance made a resurgence in his life.47 At the end of a long passage
on the role of race and racial mixtures in the arts, he explains his efforts as a
means “to elevate our feelings [what he had just called our “ressouvenir”48] to
the level of a science.”49 In this way, the topic of revenance and desire becomes
embedded, and thus controlled, within a historical “system.”
Race as an Aesthetic of Revenance
Writing to Viollet-le-Duc from Athens some time in 1867, the French minister
to Greece, Comte Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau, asks for a copy of the last
installments of the first volume of the Entretiens sur l’architecture: “You can
easily imagine how much I think of you in Athens, and since you are my
prophet in architecture, I need the master’s gospel.”50
It is curious that Gobineau would call the Entretiens his gospel, perhaps
a simple gesture of courtesy toward his friend. A diplomat, philologist,
Orientalist, and inspired novelist, Gobineau is especially notorious for his Essai
sur l’inégalité des races humaines (1853–1855), often considered the foundation
of the European theory of the Aryan master race. In fact, the two hefty
tomes divided into the four books of Gobineau’s Essai sur l’inégalité des races
humaines make up a strikingly rich “roman des origines.”51 Its complexity and
346 architecture and the historical imagination
deep pessimism put it at a safe distance from the instrumental and murderous
racism that will eventually rear its ugly head in Europe. But its goal remains
nonetheless to affirm the supremacy of the white race in all civilizations, and
Gobineau pursues it with relentless determination. He explains the rise and
fall of all human cultures exclusively through the law of blood transmission,
a rule “inscribed in the code of the universe” and “governing organic and
inorganic nature alike.”52 Any case of social degeneration is caused by a
loss of vigor of “the primordial race–unit” that constituted a given society:
“The word degenerate, when applied to a people, means … that the people no
longer have the intrinsic value they once had, because they no longer have the
same blood in their veins, continual adulterations having greatly affected the
quality of that blood.”53 For Gobineau, degeneration had completed its course
in the modern world, the blood “adulterated” beyond any possible remission,
and he mocked those who thought that regeneration could be “engineered.”
His Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines was largely conceived as a sort of
historical meditation, though not without a degree of scientific pretention.
Gobineau’s contempt for the idea of progress, his lack of faith in the virtue
of education, his total disdain for any form of nationalism—especially
French—would not seem to have encouraged him in a sympathetic reading
of the Entretiens. On the other hand, he could not have missed the many
congruences with his own work, starting of course with Viollet-le-Duc’s
explicit reference to the Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines in the eighth
“Entretien”: “the study of … this remarkable work,” Viollet-le-Duc writes
in a footnote, “cannot be too strongly urged on architects who take an
interest in the history of the arts.”54 Gobineau was no doubt delighted to
receive such public notice from a prominent archaeologist and architect,
especially following the relative neglect of his magnum opus by the scientific
community. But beyond affording him this small gratification, Viollet-leDuc’s Entretiens had an objective akin to his own. In a letter to Violletle-Duc dated February 1862, Gobineau expresses his satisfaction that the
two are involved in a similar quest,55 architecture providing a crucial clue
in untangling the mystery of origins. His lengthy letters to Viollet-le-Duc
during that period are all about early Assyrian or Persian architecture,
including translations of long passages of architectural interest from the
Zend-avesta. In 1862, he writes to Viollet-le-Duc from Iran, giving detailed
descriptions of traditional architecture, occasionally with small sketches,
including what Gobineau considers to be the form of the “pure Aryan
dwelling” built of wood.56
Viollet-le-Duc’s reference to Gobineau was not incidental. Like Gobineau,
he was seeking to understand the profound nature of historical evolution,
liberated from the myopia of current debates. In his aptly famous conclusion
to the Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, Gobineau had laid out the goal:
“The birth, growth, and decline of a society and its civilization involve
factors [that transcend] any transitory or voluntary action of either an
individual or a nation; these fundamental determining factors … operate
instinct and race 347
with imperturbable independence and impassiveness.”57 These words could
not describe better what impelled Viollet-le-Duc to write the Entretiens: to
identify the “imperturbable” historical laws of architectural evolution—the
same desire to seize history’s longue durée which will push him, after 1868,
to spend his summers trekking on Mont Blanc to identify the logic of the
earth’s transformations, and eventually to produce his spectacular map of the
formidable mountain range.
At first sight, it seems that Viollet-le-Duc assimilated Gobineau’s ideas
only progressively—his explicit adoption of racial theories came only at the
beginning of the 1860s.58 In the Entretiens, the first overt reference to the topic
occurs in the sixth (1859):
I have endeavored in these Entretiens to give prominence to the relations that have
always existed between the genius of the peoples with whose character we are
acquainted and their arts; but since ambiguity should be avoided in such questions,
I must specify what I mean by people [peuple]: not populations as marked out by
political limits, mere agglomerations of men having no connection in point of race
or community of ideas, but rather associations swayed by one dominant intellectual
tendency, impelled, shall I say, by the same temperament because affinity of race and
similarity of character binds together the members of such associations; … and, as
it is always desirable to give a name to phenomena in the intellectual as well as the
physical world, I shall distinguish sympathetic civilizations from political ones. I call
sympathetic civilization that which arises among an agglomeration of men of the
same race or races that have certain affinities with each other.59
Gobineau had given a similar definition in the first book of his Essai sur
l’inégalité des races humaines, opposing political associations to deeper social
affinities:
I must first explain what I understand by a “society,” I do not mean the more or
less extended sphere within which, in some form or other, a distinct sovereignty is
exercised. … What I mean by a “society” is an assemblage of men moved by similar
ideas and the same instincts; their political unity may be more or less imperfect, but
their social unity must be complete.60
The passage is drawn from a chapter titled “Fanaticism, Luxury, Immorality,
and Irreligion do not Cause the Fall of Societies,” in which Gobineau refutes
the idea that the loosening of moral standards has any role in the decline of
civilizations. The whole first book of the Essai sur l’égalité des races humaines is a
series of such refutations, demonstrating in turn that neither bad government,
nor the nature of institutions, nor climate, nor Christianity played any role
in the character, rise, longevity, or decline of civilizations. Just after its
publication in 1853, Mérimée congratulated Gobineau for having had “the
courage, in this time of hypocrisy, to say that neither superstition, nor atheism,
nor immorality can kill societies.”61
The argument of course resonates with the opening of the first “Entretien”:
a nation may be “primitive, superstitious, fanatical, subject to irregular and
incalculable impulses, and governed by imperfect laws, and yet possess arts
348 architecture and the historical imagination
in great perfection.”62 Just like Gobineau, Viollet-le-Duc rejects external signs
of refinement or criteria of morality in judging the vitality of a society and its
art, basing his judgment instead upon “internal,” structural factors. “It is the
nature of the civilization,” summarized Viollet-le-Duc, “and not the degree of
civilization that produces [great] epochs in art.”63 That “nature” remains illdefined in the first “Entretien,” but Viollet-le-Duc already points to a principle
of cohesion: “The arts develop with vigor when they are, so to speak, riveted
to the manners and customs of a people [rivés aux moeurs d’un peuple], and
are their truthful expression.”64 One implicit corollary is that the arts—and
architecture chiefly among them—will “rivet” to a society only when the
latter comprises a homogeneous and coherent body of people, based upon
“an affinity of race.” If not clearly stated in the first “Entretien,” the concept
becomes an axiom in latter chapters.
The emergence of the race factor in Viollet-le-Duc’s thought is in marked
contradiction with his perennial insistence that architecture is a rational
response to need: if racially determined, architectural forms would be inherited
rather than the product of social circumstances. Anthyme Saint-Paul had
picked up this ambiguity between the “idées reçues” and the “besoin senti.”65
Viollet-le-Duc himself brings out the distinction in the tenth “Entretien”:
In the study of the arts of the past … we should observe a clear distinction between
a form that is only the imprint of a tradition, and adopted without reflection [forme
irréfléchie], and a form that is the immediate expression of a requirement, of a certain
social condition; and it is only the study of the latter that has a practical advantage, an
advantage not consisting in the imitation of this form, but in the example it affords for
the application of a principle.66
There is a “practical advantage” to study how, in the past, architecture has
responded to need, but it does not follow that the forms used were born ab
ovo: new needs simply transform preexisting traditions. Otherwise, why
would the first volume of the Entretiens need to trace a genealogy of the
whole of Western architecture? In the sixth “Entretien,” Viollet-le-Duc asserts
peremptorily that “a renaissance [read, a new architecture] is never based on
degenerate types; on the contrary, it can only secure a long career if it plunges
back to the primitive types.”67 So even as he adapts to new conditions, the
architect must turn back to primitive types for regeneration, finding in these
early conceptions great poetic force: exactly what Viollet-le-Duc has been
doing all along for modern France.
The discourse on instinct and memory deployed in the first “Entretien”
helps to dispel the confusion between inheritance and need. The arts are
not only the product of “outward needs” but also the expression of “inner
urges.” As artists and architects are confronted with new contingencies
and must adapt their work accordingly, they have to use their imagination
and thus trigger deep-seated feelings. Architecture, just like music, is a
privileged medium to convey such inward feelings, since it does not rely
on the imitation of nature: “Music [and] architecture … are the only arts
instinct and race 349
in which primitive man displayed certain creative faculties inherent to his
nature, to his desire to propagate his ideas, to preserve his remembrances or
impart his hopes, by associating them with a form or a sound.”68 These two
non-mimetic arts have an intimate relation to human instinct, having the
capacity to “develop in the mind certain feelings which are already there in
a latent state [my emphasis].”69
And if art “reawakens” latent feelings, it does so, paradoxically, only when
forced to adapt to change. The mere passive duplication of historical forms
does not engage the architect’s inner drives. In his L’art russe (1877), Violletle-Duc drew attention to the fact that Russian architects of the seventeenth
century created buildings whose decorative forms recalled the ancient
architecture of India, explaining that it was a legitimate form of borrowing:
Is this a case of imitation? No; it is a memory, an inspiration, a desire to produce
effects that are likely to please Russians. … And isn’t this the way any given
nation constitutes a new art? Isn’t it by drawing inspiration from an earlier art and
assimilating it to one’s genius and needs? Direct imitation has never produced
and can never produce anything other than a diminished, lifeless expression of the
imitated object.70
“Assimilation” of the past is contrasted with mere imitation, the former
stemming from deeply seated instincts that are a form of recollection. It is
through confrontation with the new that these artistic instincts are awakened.
The more architects are confronted with change, the better chance they have
to regain contact with their latent feelings and therefore to tie their production
to a living tradition.
In the first “Entretien,” Viollet-le-Duc gives examples of such “latent
feelings” drawn from the spectacle of nature: the sound of the ocean, the
murmuring of the wind, the rising or setting of the sun.71 What appears
universal at first is in fact bound to a specific racial group. Ernest Renan, in his
Histoire générale et système comparé des langues sémitiques (1855), had used the
same type of natural phenomena to characterize the first religious expressions
of Indo-European races:
It was vivid impressions, such as that of the wind in the trees, … of water running, of
the sea, that took hold of the imagination of these child-like people. The Aryan could
not separate himself from the world as quickly as the Semite. For a long time, he
worshipped his own sensations.72
Alfred Maury arrived at the same conclusion in his important “Essai historique
sur la religion des Aryas,” published in the Revue archéologique in 1853.73 In his
“Antiquités américaines,” published as an introduction to Désiré Charnay’s
Cités et ruines américaines of 1863, Viollet-le-Duc described the rising of the
sun as the basis of Aryan religious cults.74 And, indeed, Viollet-le-Duc seems
to have had a racial horizon in mind already in the first “Entretien,” when
he writes that “only those people who have been endowed with a feeling for
art have succeeded, by combining its various expressions, … in producing
350 architecture and the historical imagination
those grand effects whose cause we can now scarcely understand, but which
nevertheless exercised so powerful an influence that their memory still dwells
within us after the lapse of ages [my emphasis].”75 In other words, only
specially gifted people can produce artistic effects that have the power to
haunt us. In the eighth “Entretien” he will be explicit: “I admit (one must,
when confronted with the evidence) that the Aryan-Hellenes, Semitized in
Greece, found themselves in conditions of such [racial] intermingling as to
have produced arts superior to what the world had seen or will ever see
again.”76
Cultural heredity predicated on race implied the existence of affinities
in ideas and in the means of expressing them. Gobineau had developed his
own understanding of that crucial issue mostly around the notion of the
transmission and transformation of language. In his Essai sur l’inégalité des
races humaines, he stressed that “language was intimately tied to the form of
intelligence of the races,” going so far as to claim that generations can never
fully possess languages other than those spoken by their ancestors.77 In his
Traité des écritures cunéiformes (1864), he pushed the idea to the point of cabalistic
magic: “la parole,” or the spoken word—and especially the Semitic language,
which he derives from cuneiform script—is endowed with an enchanting
spell, a spontaneous, organic, and magical expression of will and desire:
“Probole of the will, the spoken word [la parole] is therefore the apparition, the
expression of the expansive force, which, being life itself, is inseparable from
perfect knowledge.”78 “Probole” is a theological term meaning a projection
from the body as an extension of the substance. It is curious to see the skeptic
Gobineau plunge into the Kabbalah. But it was an attractive model for his
theory of the racial transmission of ideas, which conferred upon language the
sort of magnetic force that Joseph de Maistre had already postulated earlier
in the century. Language, and especially the spoken word, was a “probole”
of the racial body. After abandoning his formation as a priest and becoming
a Freemason, Honoré Joseph Chavée developed this provocative thesis in a
series of texts such as Moïse et les langues (1855), and especially the brochure
Les langues et les races (1862), which caused quite a stir at the time of its
publication. It seduced Renan (even though he recognized that it could not
be proven) and Viollet-le-Duc (who purchased the book). Chavée was indeed
eloquent, conducting, as he said, a “psychological archaeology of races”:
To any given race corresponds a language, and to any given language, a race. … Two
languages that are radically diverse necessarily suppose two primitive varieties of
cerebral organization proper to our species. … To put into language what is in one’s
head and in the manner that this head feels and acquires knowledge, is the common,
the first, the spontaneous, and the inevitable work of each race.79
Influenced by Chavée’s thesis,80 Gobineau expended a great deal of time
and energy on an ambitious philosophical essay dealing with “les existences
immatérielles,” trying to prove the curious notion that languages were
“living beings” with an independent existence of their own. The claim
instinct and race 351
was even extended to “ideas,” as a sort of “organic” or ghostly version of
Neoplatonic idealism. The “Mémoire sur les diverses manifestations de la
vie individuelle,” as Gobineau’s essay was finally titled, was first published
in 1868 in German in the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik
directed by Immanuel-Hermann von Fichte, an anti-Hegelian monist, son of
the great Johann Gottlieb. The essay attracted virtually no attention, though
Michel-Eugène Chevreul had promised Gobineau to give a public account
of it at the Académie des Sciences in Paris. But the ideas expounded in it
lend support to my argument that the nineteenth-century attraction to race
was based on a theme of “revenance.” Gobineau’s description of the mind is
indeed populated with ghosts. Following a radically anti-Cartesian model,
he posits that life exists within matter, yet in a form distinct from it; there
are different categories of existence, some material and some immaterial.
“Ideas” are a species of such “immaterial existence”: “l’Idée vit, l’Idée vivifie,
remue et fait remuer.”81 This was not understood metaphorically, as Gobineau
believed ideas literally to be “organisms,” entities that were immaterial, but
subject to the same laws that govern living beings. Georges Cuvier’s principle
of “conditions of existence” applied to them as to the living creatures on
earth: the human mind constituted a specific environment or milieu—each
race endowed, of course, with a distinctive one—in which any given “idea”
may or may not find its proper conditions of existence.82 If these conditions
proved unsuitable, the idea would quickly degenerate: “The milieux [of the
mind] possess … elements congruent to the constitution of the beings they
encompass [i.e. ideas], otherwise they could not be haunted by them [my
emphasis].”83 New ideas, moreover, are generated, according to Gobineau,
just as new organisms are born: by the coupling of ideas of opposite genders.84
In his Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, Gobineau had already assumed
(following the Romantic theories of Pierre-Simon Ballanche, Victor Courtet,
and Gustave d’Eichtal)85 that races, relative to one another, are either of the
male or female principle—a gender distinction, Gobineau asserted, which did
not indicate superiority one way or the other, and which could be modified
in relation to circumstances.86 This sexual principle was at the basis of any
viable new human development: “Every human activity, intellectual or
moral,” concluded Gobineau in the Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, “has
its primitive source in either one of the two currents, male or female, and
it is only with races amply provided with either one of these two elements,
without one being ever completely deprived of the other, that societies could
reach … the state of civilization.”87 Ideas, as immaterial organic beings, had
similar gender characteristics, and it was through the coupling of a male and
female “ideas” that a new one could be generated. Autonomous, immaterial
beings—literally phantoms—lived and reproduced within the milieu of the
mind.
To what extent Viollet-le-Duc acknowledged these rather curious theories
with theosophic overtones is unclear. But he certainly flirted with them. In the
fifth “Entretien,” picking up a comment made by Mérimée, he described the
352 architecture and the historical imagination
“very singular mental operation” at the basis of the formation of new ideas:
“Reflection stirs up in our minds many old ideas, and suddenly a new one arises,
we don’t know how and why, no more than we know how, from the union
of a male and female, a new individual is born.”88 In the sixth “Entretien,” he
continued on the same theme, claiming that “Ideas are like families, they must
be crossbred, otherwise they will decline.”89 In Viollet-le-Duc’s mind, ideas
formed an irreducible element of artistic creation. He thought, like Gobineau,
that they formed the substantial basis of an architectural genealogy.
The first systematic exposition of Viollet-le-Duc’s racial understanding of
the history of architecture is found in his “Antiquités américaines” of 1863. He
will repeat it with minor variations in a number of subsequent publications,
notably his course at the École des Beaux-Arts (1864), the articles “Maison”
(1863) and “Sculpture” (1866) in the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, the
eleventh “Entretien” (1866–1868), a conference at the Sorbonne in February
1867,90 and after the Franco–Prussian War, the Histoire de l’habitation humaine
(1875) and L’art russe (1877). This compulsive theme displaced Viollet-le-Duc’s
fixation on the formation of the Gothic which we have analyzed previously.
But the triangulation between feudal warriors, the clergy, and the monarchy
which conditioned the development of the Gothic resurfaces in another guise
in his racial theory, the dialectic relation among the three primordial human
races replacing the struggle between the three estates of French society.
Viollet-le-Duc indeed adopts Gobineau’s polygenist theory, according
to which three separate racial types made up the human race at its origin:
white, yellow, and black, all subsequent variations being the product of
racial mixtures. He thus moves away from the more commonly binary racial
divisions, such as the homme du nord versus the homme du midi, or Latin versus
Germanic, which, for instance, Hippolyte Fortoul had evoked in his history of
art. Viollet-le-Duc also accepts the widely held, but not undisputed nineteenthcentury idea of their inequality: the white race being superior to the other two,
the black being the lowest on the scale. The term “Aryan” refers to the white
race, and describes the primitive people from which the civilization of India
originated. To each race, according to Viollet-le-Duc, corresponds a specific
constructive system:
The great Aryan white race, which in the earliest times spread from the northern
plateaux of India over the lower and warmer lands, does not appear to have adopted
any kind of structure other than timber-framing; since wherever we find traces of that
race, wooden structure prevails. … The yellow races have a special aptitude for earth
works, and consequently for masonry, which is an agglomerative process. … The
black races who occupied Upper Egypt, … carve their dwellings out of the slopes of
calcareous hills.91
To my knowledge, Viollet-le-Duc’s racial–constructive typology has no
precedent in nineteenth-century ethnological or architectural writings. Even
in Germany, where studies of the national character or Volkgeist were highly
developed, racial typologies were never so strictly determined. Medievalist
instinct and race 353
Karl Weinhold and architect Gottfried Semper, for example, did write
about a racial component at the origin of primitive wooden construction,
but it was not a determinant within a systematic constructive typology.92
Gobineau was very interested in architecture, and occasionally speculated
about primordial types, but never formulated a clear system.93 The
closest precedent to Viollet-le-Duc’s three types is Antoine-Chrysostome
Quatremère de Quincy’s typology of three primitive dwellings, first
described around 1800 and itself indebted to the ethnological theories of
Cornelius-Franciscus de Pauw from the 1770s. Quatremère de Quincy
associated each of the three original forms of dwelling not with different
races, but with different modes of living: the tent for nomadic shepherds,
the grotto for hunter-gatherers, and the wooden cabin for agrarian peoples.
Each was at the source of a specific architectural tradition: the grotto led
to the Egyptian, the tent to the Chinese, and the cabin to the Greek, the
latter being the only one capable of coherent “imitative” development.94 It
was tempting to associate retrospectively the black race with Egypt (Africa),
the yellow with China, and the white with Greece. Viollet-le-Duc’s system
is rather more complex, but he was consciously adapting Quatremère de
Quincy’s thesis, no doubt in another attempt to elaborate into a scientific
(and nationalist) system the ideas of the famous classical theorist.
In fact, Viollet-le-Duc was not the first to have picked up Quatremère de
Quincy’s idea of a tripartite typology of dwelling. Trinitarian schemes were
integral to Romanticism. In his influential Historical Essay on Architecture of
1835, for instance, British collector Thomas Hope adopted Quatremère de
Quincy’s typology, but shifted its terms by loosely associating each dwelling
form with a race. The Greeks, members of the “handsomest of the human races,”
relied of course on the forms of wooden construction for their architecture.95
But for Hope, the racial principle was not a significant determinant, and was
predicated on force of habit rather than instinct. (Indeed, two different races
could develop similar constructive habits.) Orientalist James Fergusson in
England and architect Daniel Ramée in France were probably the keenest to
integrate ethnological factors around the middle of the nineteenth century.96
The former’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture (1855) and the latter’s Histoire
générale de l’architecture (1860–1862)—both quoted in the Entretiens—are
the most immediate precedents. Neither work, however, equates precise
architectural forms with race. Even Ramée—who otherwise gives prominence
to race as history’s master key—remains vague in this respect, his fierce
anti-Semitism dominating all other concerns. Generally, the concept of race
in French archaeological or art historical works of the nineteenth-century,
though evoked with increasing frequency in the second half of the century,
remains impressionistic. Even Hippolyte Taine, famous for his synthesis of
multiple factors in the production of works of art, never formulated a racial
“system” for the arts. Race was part of his well-known equation of “la race, le
milieu, le moment” but it remained a qualitative element of indefinite contour
rather than a scientific tool.
354 architecture and the historical imagination
Viollet-le-Duc thus stands out among archaeologists and art historians in
the 1860s with his precise racial–constructive scheme. It is striking to see how
much race becomes a determinant in his essay on pre-Columbian architecture.
The presence of specific architectural motifs (either ornamental or structural)
leads him to conclude with total confidence that specific racial groups were
involved in a monument’s construction. There is a complete identification of
form with race. What comes closest to that sort of precision is philological
analysis, especially in the work of Renan and Gobineau. Renan suggested,
though in passing, that architecture, language and race were concomitant.97
His philology occasionally relied on architectural metaphors, as when he
described the original Aryan language as the one with a greater “construction
intérieure.”98 Gobineau went further, following Chavée in associating a specific
form of language with each of the three primordial races. No resemblance
exists between Gobineau’s linguistic scheme and Viollet-le-Duc’s architectural
one, except in the vaguest terms.99 It may be mentioned that the possibility of
building a bridge between race, language, and architecture had been made
explicit by medical doctor and hygienist Adolphe Clavel in a significant
passage of the beginning of his Les races humaines et leur part dans la civilisation
(1860).100 But again, Clavel does not elaborate with any details.
Whatever the influence of philology, Viollet-le-Duc’s most obvious goal
was to “correct” Quatremère de Quincy’s theory of the three primordial
dwellings.101 According to Viollet-le-Duc, the three constructive systems were
rarely used in isolation, the history of architecture being essentially a story of
hybridization. Following Gobineau’s ideas on language, he believed that every
instance of racial crossbreeding lead to architectural composites, the relative
contribution of each constructive tradition proportionate to the contribution
of each race. A vast combinatory game based on blood ties thus stretches
across the ages. Its symbolic web can be untangled racially, linguistically,
and architecturally. The nature and modulation of such hybridization make
up the hidden thread of the first volume of the Entretiens. Distinct racial
interactions condition the nature of architectural transformations. Picking up
a leading concept of Romantic historiography, Viollet-le-Duc establishes two
basic modes: either a superior race conquers an inferior native population,
which leads to a system of castes, or a given race settles in a region inhabited
by people of (more or less) common racial origin, which leads, after a long
period of struggle, to fusion. In the first case, the arts develop quickly but soon
attain a static “hieratic” form. In the second, the arts evolve slowly, struggling
to find their way, but yet continually progressing, and eventually reach an
apogee before degenerating into mannerism and excess.102 It is in instances
of racial hybridity that humanity created its greatest artistic achievements,
a process in all ways similar to the “crystallization” that gave rise to Gothic
architecture in France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries: “Any artistic
explosion … in history is produced through the contact of two different races.
It seems that art is never but the product of a sort of intellectual fermentation
of natures endowed with different aptitudes.”103
instinct and race 355
Racial fusion understood as a process of “intellectual fermentation”
is the fundamental law of Viollet-le-Duc’s archaeological system. Left to
itself, the Aryan would not produce any art: “he governs, he is endowed
with high moral aspirations, he establishes cults, he goes to war; … but
he despises working with his hands.”104 Yellows and blacks, for their part,
would never reach even the most primary form of civilization without the
addition of white blood. These racial characteristics follow closely Gobineau’s
description of the respective aptitude of each race.105 The black race, lowest on
the scale, he described as the most pronounced in “animality,” overcome by
desire and sensuality. The yellow race is its antithesis: he has little physical
vigor, tends toward apathy, and weak desires, but he is obstinate, with a
practical mentality and a respect of the law. The white race, as expected, has
preponderance in terms of intelligence, reflective power, instinct for order,
great physical power, and a singular love for life. This superiority is balanced,
however, by a marked inferiority in the intensity of his sensations: despite his
stronger physical constitution, he is much “less drawn to and absorbed by
corporal action.”106 This is why artistic production, according to Gobineau,
is inconceivable without racial fusion, and in particular he specifies that
the fusion of white with black races has led to humanity’s greatest artistic
achievements.107 In this regard—and in this regard only—the intermixing of
races, concedes Gobineau, was a definite historical gain.
Generally speaking, Viollet-le-Duc, following Mérimée’s lead, is much more
positive on the question of racial hybridity than Gobineau. In his Entretiens,
racial fusion is the trigger for all stages of Western artistic development.
Greek architecture in Periclean Athens is the product of the fusion of the
Dorians and Ionians—in other words, Aryan–Hellenes and Aryan–Semites.108
In Byzantium, the Nestorian Greeks, immigrating to Syria and therefore
renewing contact with racial stock of Persian origin, successfully merged
ancient Greek and Roman architecture to sow the seed that would eventually
lead to the development of the Gothic.109 The Gothic, in turn, is the product
of the interaction of Franks (Aryan–Germans) and Gauls (Aryan–Celts),
merging the concrete architecture (“architecture concrète”) of Rome with the
trabeated masonry (“architecture d’appareil en plate-bande”) of the Greeks.110
Everything proceeds according to this combinatory principle.111 Following
the model that Gobineau had established in his very convoluted description
of the emergence of Greek art in the Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines,112
Viollet-le-Duc identifies the intermixing of Aryans with Semites as “producing
the most favorable ethnological condition for the cultivation of the plastic
arts.”113 The idea of such “providential coupling” was widespread among
philologists and ethnologists.114 Following Michelet,115 Renan,116 Ramée,117
and many others, Viollet-le-Duc opposes these two branches of the white
race. In his description, the Semites are monotheistic, with a strong tendency
toward political and artistic stability; the Aryans, in contrast, are polytheistic,
creative, and constantly searching.118 Mixing Aryans with Semites vitalizes
the latter while stabilizing the former. Even if he gives the Aryans the better
356 architecture and the historical imagination
role, Viollet-le-Duc is careful to specify that he is not anti-Semitic.119 In fact,
one of the most convoluted arguments running through the first volume of
the Entretiens is the role of Phoenician (or Semitic) traditions in the unfolding
of Western architecture, each phase of its development enriching Phoenician
sources, either in Egypt, Palestine, or Syria. The contribution of each of the two
racial elements—Aryan and Semitic—was equally essential. When the Semitic
element dominates, artistic production tends toward hieratic formulas and
monolithisme, following Renan’s famous characterization.120 When the Aryans
have the upper hand, art undergoes a progressive development and adopts a
trabeated system born of wooden construction.
Of all the stages of this story of cross-fertilization, the advent of Greek art
is by far the most decisive. For the first time in history, the static “hieratic”
forms of Asian architecture undergo a process of “naturalization” or
“anthropomorphization.” The second and third “Entretien” devoted to
Greek art can be misleading in this regard. The characterization of Greek
architecture as having turned against the servile imitation of a tradition of
wooden construction has often been construed as an apologia for progress
in opposition to tradition, which would be in stark contradiction with the
racial argument that runs throughout the Entretiens. In fact, Viollet-le-Duc’s
intention—best understood when his École des Beaux-Arts’ and Sorbonne
lectures are read in conjunction with the Entretiens—is to demonstrate that
the Greeks “developed,” in the organic sense of the word, the fixed types
coming from Asia. Devising an architecture whose form was true to masonry
construction rather than a servile imitation of carpentry, the Greeks made
the Aryan tradition more “real” and obvious: it transformed a hieratic type
into a living form. Much of the second and third “Entretiens” deal with such
anthropomorphic processes, showing how the Greek temple is progressively
infused, in its character and profile, with the vigor and suppleness of the
human body. The logical process introduced by the Greeks is therefore not
in the service of some abstract structural performance but rather represents a
sort of incarnation in stone of older traditions:
Greek architecture may be best compared to a man stripped of his clothes; the
external parts of his body are but the consequences of his organic structure, of his
basic needs, of the framework of his bones, and the functions of his muscles. … “In
what respect is an unclothed, well-formed young man beautiful?” To this question,
the only reply would be, “A naked man is beautiful because he is, because, without
any effort of the mind,—without consideration—we know that he moves, that he is
vigorous, that he feels, sees, thinks,—in a word, that he is complete, that he is one.”121
Viollet-le-Duc’s conception of the development of Greek architecture as a
naturalization process, taking the human body as model is, of course, far
from unprecedented: Quatremère de Quincy, and closer to Viollet-le-Duc
himself, the Hellenist Charles-Ernest Beulé, had described the evolution of
Greek architecture in such corporal terms.122 What distinguishes Viollet-leDuc’s description is the accent on construction and on the perception of the
instinct and race 357
constructive elements. The Doric temple modifies traditional Asian types
toward greater tectonic legibility and a sense of the human form through
the perfecting of ornamental profiles. The Greek ideal achieved perfect
intelligibility through a visual impression that is whole, like that generated
by the human body: the pleasure felt from the work merges perfectly with our
understanding of its structure.123
The theory recalls aesthetic ideas devised by Italian philosopher Vincenzo
Gioberti, from whom Gobineau had derived key arguments for his thesis
of racial superiority. According to Gioberti, beauty was a form of “superintelligibility” generated through the creation of an “aesthetic phantom”: “a
mental being that animates, vivifies, and represents as real to the mind’s eye the
intelligible type [my emphasis].”124 For the Catholic Gioberti, such a mental
“phantom” allowed a “fantastic” perception of nature as it was before the Fall,
or more precisely, as it was in the second period of Genesis as described by
Moses.125 Gioberti also speaks of the figure of Christ as the ineffable image of
the perfect body.126 The concept of “aesthetic phantom” inspired Gobineau’s
notion of “immaterial existence.” But for Gobineau, as for Viollet-le-Duc, the
myth of the Aryan replaces that of Christ and the Bible: the perfect Aryan body
is the “aesthetic phantom” immanent within the mind of his descendents.
Thus the infusion of Aryan blood into the Semitic mind that lies at the basis
of Greek art “reawakened” the latent memories of this Aryan body. Greek
idealism (or rationalism) in Viollet-le-Duc’s terms is nothing other than this
propensity for an ever more convincing “naturalization” of the inherited type.
It is the same process of “making real” that Viollet-le-Duc had described in the
first “Entretien,” with his example of the primitive man sculpting a red lion,
or the modern novelist writing a fantastic story: it involved the naturalizing
of either a memory (the vanquishing of the lion) or of a ghost—both memory
and ghost standing in for figures from the past. The statue of Vercingetorix
erected in 1865 at Alise-Sainte-Reine stands as a vivid concretization of that
haunting return of the past (Fig. 10.6). The colossal monument in repoussé
copper—a traditional medieval technique Viollet-le-Duc would help revive,
and which would later be employed to fabricate the Statue of Liberty on
Liberty Island (dedicated 1886)—was sculpted by Aimé Millet, but under the
extremely close supervision of Viollet-le-Duc, who even provided the profile.
Within Viollet-le-Duc’s history, one monument can legitimately be
described as Western architecture’s “aesthetic phantom,” casting its shadow
over the entire tradition: the tombs of ancient Lycia (Fig. 10.7). These striking
Hellenistic monuments hewn out of the living rock on the southwest coast
of Asia Minor were built of solid blocks of marble, the sarcophagus itself
occupying the middle section adorned with bas-reliefs. These funerary
structures had captivated many generations of archaeologists since Charles
Fellows published the account of his travels in Lycia in 1838, so much so that
the British Museum arranged to have some of the best specimen shipped to
London. Viollet-le-Duc’s 1850 trip to England had in part been motivated by
his desire to see the collection of Lycian antiquities at the museum in London.
10.6
Aimé Millet and E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Statue of Vercingetorix,
Alise-Sainte-Reine (Côte-d’Or). 1865. Photo by the author
10.7 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc. Lycian tomb (British Museum). Steel engraving by Léon
Gaucherel. Pl. 1 from Entretiens sur l’architecture, vol. 1, 1863. Private collection
360 architecture and the historical imagination
Lycian monuments were very appealing to the Romantic imagination.
Discovered at the crossroad between East and West, these ancient structures
were a striking example of transposition of wooden construction into stone, and
provided a convincing model of the prototype at the basis of the development
of the Greek temple. Désiré Raoul-Rochette, Jacques-Ignace Hittorff and
Beulé devoted much attention to these curious structures, trying to situate
their importance in the transmission of architectural types between Asia and
Greece.127 Even more fascinating was the fact that the tombs were topped with
a pointed barrel vault, a characteristic that led art historian Ernest Vinet, a close
friend of Viollet-le-Duc, to call these structures “Gothic tombs” found “under
the Sun of Asia.”128 The pointed arch was indeed the characteristic perpetually
underscored by architects and antiquarians, including Charles Fellows, who
had labeled them “Gothic-formed tombs,”129 as well as Charles Cockerell,
Thomas Hope, Alexandre and Léon de Laborde, Charles Lenormant, and
Félix-Marie-Charles Texier, among a very long list of commentators.130 The
monuments had the added interest of bearing intriguing inscriptions, akin
to cuneiform writing, which led to much speculation. British philologist
Daniel Sharpe, in an often-quoted letter to Charles Fellows, classified it as
an early Indo-Germanic language, bearing resemblance to Zend and even
Sanskrit with a contribution of Semitic elements.131 Adding to this prestigious
genealogy, Alfred Maury, another friend of Viollet-le-Duc, interpreted the
iconography of Lycian bas-reliefs as betraying the practice of primitive Asian
cults, based on the adoration of light, “in other words, precisely the element
that constitutes the mythology par excellence of the Aryan race.”132 He also
specifies that “Xanthus,” the name of the city where the Lycian tombs were
mostly found, meant “blond.”133 Gobineau, for his part, had described the
Lycians as of Semitic origin, which, for him, meant a branch of the white race
related to the Aryan family.134 These architectural, linguistic, religious, and
racial filiations were attractive to Viollet-le-Duc, to say the least.
I borrow the term “aesthetic phantom” to label the Lycian tomb, as no other
better describes its appearance in Viollet-le-Duc’s work: its image, engraved
or hand-drawn, shows up at key junctures, yet without being fully explained
as its prominence would warrant. We have to piece together information
gleaned from various writings to reconstruct its meaning. The most beautiful
representation of the tomb comes in the first plate of the atlas accompanying
the Entretiens (Fig. 10.7). It is a remarkably delicate steel engraving produced
by Léon Gaucherel in 1858 for insertion into the second “Entretien,” and
reproduces the specimen in the British Museum collection. It is difficult to
know how the monument was displayed when Viollet-le-Duc saw it in 1850,
but judging from the description of a catalogue published in 1851 (and knowing
its condition today), we must conclude that his representation is accurate,
except for the fact that Gaucherel increased the height of the base block.135
We know two other representations of the tomb made by Viollet-le-Duc: he
drew it on the blackboard during his École des Beaux-Arts lecture of 1864,136
and inserted a full-page woodcut of it in the ninth volume of the Dictionnaire
instinct and race 361
raisonné de l’architecture under the article “Tombeau.” The latter is remarkable
for being the only non-medieval image among 3,367 figures included in his
magnum opus, the only exception being the Roman Pantheon illustrated in
the same volume. The image in the Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, dating
from 1868, is a nearly exact duplicate of the version illustrated in the Entretiens
except that Viollet-le-Duc inscribed the monument within a landscape with a
figure in costume for scale. To make this survey complete, I should add that
we found in the Histoire de l’habitation humaine of 1875 the characteristic profile
of the Lycian tomb in the primitive Aryan wooden dwelling on the Upper
Indus.137 Finally, Viollet-le-Duc discussed the Lycian tomb in his Sorbonne
conference of 1867.138 The lecture transcription, however, does not specify if
he drew it on the blackboard.
It is not too difficult to guess what significance these small funeral
monuments had for Viollet-le-Duc: even if they dated from the Hellenistic
period, they were clearly of Persian influence, providing a fascinating
record of the persistence of Aryan architectural traditions based on wooden
construction and confirming his theory of the transmission of architectural
forms from the Orient to the West. In the article “Tombeau” of the Dictionnaire
raisonné de l’architecture, Viollet-le-Duc describes the monument as being
derived from ancient wooden funerary shrines, complete with their curved
lid and poles for transport during procession; that is to say, an original Persian
or Aryan wooden ritual structure monumentalized in monolithic masonry.139
Interestingly, in a key chapter of Gottfried Semper’s Style in the Technical and
Tectonic Arts (1860), the author inserted a small woodcut of the same Lycian
tomb to illustrate his famous principle that “the festival apparatus, the
improvised scaffold … is the motive of the permanent monument.”140 But, for
Viollet-le-Duc, the transposition from wood to stone was only one element
that made the structure worthy of attention. Juxtaposed with the architectural
features imitating wood was an architecture of pure masonry: the solid
marble base with the rock-cut sarcophagus resting on it. Viollet-le-Duc points
out that, unlike the top portion, these lower elements were of a form true to
masonry construction, indicating a radically different building tradition.141
He is not explicit about its source, but implies Phoenician–Semitic influences,
the characteristic form of Semitic architecture being a “vast heap of stone
masonry without mortar.”142 The Lycian tomb thus juxtaposes—but keeps
separate—the two constructive traditions that will be wedded in Greece:
wood and stone construction.143 Such dualism may have had a symbolic
resonance in his mind. According to the g