Luzarches
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The drawing is quite difficult to interpret. The winged niched altars either side of the High Altar are certainly late (flambouyant) Gothic. The High Altar is, I’m fairly sure, the same as was consecrated when the cathedral was built, remembering that the hemicycle did not collapse. Now the tower structure over the High Altar? It’s not at all clear that this rests directly upon the gradine. Perhaps this openwork (looking distincly 1250-70s to my eyes) is actually part of the screenwork separating the choir from the ambulatory? It might have formed the superstructure of a smaller altar behind the High that we cannot see?, Oh, that it had been drawn by Hollar! Either way, it is later than the High Altar. But even though this would have be the case, it is unclear whether the stained glass crucifixion in the axial chapel behind would have been particularly visible.
I also wonder whether the canons ever got round to installing a jube (halfway down the choir)?
@Luzarches wrote:
Re Beauvais: The High Altar – sadly stripped of its ornament which appears to have been scattered all over the sanctuary…
However, and I am that sure Praxiteles is aware of this, there is a somewhat crude drawing of the old (medieval) High Altar reproduced in Stephen Murray, Beauvais Cathedral, Architecture of Transcendence, Princeton University Press, 1989 .
As I recall, it was large, perhaps even of the same width as the current and surmounted by an openwork tower-pinacled niche with painted side wings. There were two smaller altars on either side with similar fretwork, I think one dedicated to St Anne. Beyond this ensemble one can make out now vanished tombs and open-work gothic screen tracery.
As splendid as the eighteenth century stuff is, it’s as well to remember that they replaced stone and precious metals with marble, scagliola and plaster…It’s a moot point really, since the Revolution would have swept all the old stuff away anyway.
Here is the original arrangement; the drawing belongs to the Mairie of Beauvais.
@Praxiteles wrote:
As splendid as the eighteenth century stuff is, it’s as well to remember that they replaced stone and precious metals with marble, scagliola and plaster…It’s a moot point really, since the Revolution would have swept all the old stuff away anyway.
True. But, hardly grounds for privating it or replacing it with worthless junk even farther removed from stone and presious metals, or, as the case here is, simply divesting it of its ornament for no purpose or reason.
I couldn’t agree more! As an ensemble, the present 18th C arrangement is vastly more dignified than the clutter of moveable bits and pieces standing in front of it.
I wonder if the stripping of the big six is a provocation to the ‘Benedictine’ restoration? Are there any Catholics left practicing in Beauvais? There’s also that splendid late Gothic church of St Etienne off towards the market square.
Re Beauvais: The High Altar – sadly stripped of its ornament which appears to have been scattered all over the sanctuary…
However, and I am that sure Praxiteles is aware of this, there is a somewhat crude drawing of the old (medieval) High Altar reproduced in Stephen Murray, Beauvais Cathedral, Architecture of Transcendence, Princeton University Press, 1989 .
As I recall, it was large, perhaps even of the same width as the current and surmounted by an openwork tower-pinacled niche with painted side wings. There were two smaller altars on either side with similar fretwork, I think one dedicated to St Anne. Beyond this ensemble one can make out now vanished tombs and open-work gothic screen tracery.
As splendid as the eighteenth century stuff is, it’s as well to remember that they replaced stone and precious metals with marble, scagliola and plaster…It’s a moot point really, since the Revolution would have swept all the old stuff away anyway.
The local press:
Re The Shrine at La Crosse…
Have a look at post #4029; I have a problem with the diagonal planes of the crossing piers. Awkward detail, I think. I quite like Stroik. He’s a trouper for the cause of liturgical good sense. But I also think he has more than a touch of the old Quinlan Terrys about him. He isn’t quite fluent in the Classical language of architecture.
I wonder whether this American reordering has been noticed by any commenters here? It pertains to an exceptionally fine Greco-classical cathedral church of Springfield Illinois.
http://stbarbara.blogspot.com/2008/0…cathedral.html
Pictures of the church presently:
http://www.romeofthewest.com/2007/09…mmaculate.html
The usual semi-Voskoite plans seem to be on the table: ellimination of altar rails, curved steps, destruction of old High Altar, diagonally positioned cathedra.
I suppose we should not be so surprised that the liberal agenda is still being played out; a wounded animal is always more dangerous. Or even old bishops.
A plan of the proposed may also be found at the latest posting of The Society of Saint Barbara blog.
Please take the trouble to follow the links; I was outraged that such a project could be proposed 3 years into the Ratzinger era, but not, as I inferred, surprised.
A news conference is being held on Tuesday, the 13th of March at 11:30am, where there will be a press conference on the presentation of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation of Pope Benedict, Sacramentum Caritatis.
It will be interesting to see whether this long-awaited document will have any ramifications for sacred architecture, whether we might find that the Irish and British Catholic conception of the liturgical ‘mainstream’ is drifting leftwards at a dramatic tilt?
“Once you’ve collected about 300 more of these contrasting expositions, you ought to publish them in one big book with a foreward titled “J’accuse!!!” Then photos of the wreckovators themselves should be inset into the shots of their handiwork ad perpetuam rei memoriam.”
This is a seriously good idea, and the logical concrete outcome of what has been discovered and examined on this thread. Such a book would bypass the need for polemic, vitriol and rhetoric. Just print the pictures before and after, the plans, the job cost and a neutral description of the changes. Then let any fair-minded person with half an eye decide whether this is all evidence of the ‘new springtime’, or merely of a brief and regretable cold snap before chastened restoration takes place.
Probably enough in Ireland for one book and possibly a bit politically controversial to lump in Catholic Churches in Britain in the same volume, although most of us are aboriginally Irish anyway?
Re: #2429, Newry.
The dreaded diagonal. Totally out of place in any historical church, imho. Is there anything more ugly? And that hideous mutilation of the old high altar? I wonder whether the clergy of the future will make an apology to their people when, in the future, they go begging to them for the money to restore it to the way that it was?
Re: Precious metal altar-frontals.
There is a beautiful late Gothic example in the duomo museum in Florence.
I was in Aachen in November and the dom has more than one frontal, the other, I think, is in the treasury. Of course, as Prax will know, the dom has a magnificent ambo of a similar design to the frontal. It’s unfortunate that the frame of the altar has been lost and replaced with wood. I think it kills it a bit..? Also a shame that the volksaltar of which it is a part has been constructed to wilfully prevent ad orientem celebration. At least it has a footpace, I suppose.
Interesting that the Nicholas of Verdun altarpiece at Klosterneuberg started life as an ambo.
The facade at Chartres was originally gabled above the lancets and was an early Gothic completion of the romanesque nave. The rose was added with the nave’s rebuilding, hence the slightly clunky composition.
Fearg wrote:Some shots of Notre Dame de Paris in March 2004 – the crossing was being re-ordered at this time:I think that the crossing had been reordered some time before that; there were new stone steps and a fixed beaten bronze altar there when I visited in 1991. Have they sine done something new? Anyone know?
Now the old sanctuary is a total dog’s breakfast. V-le-Duc was completely undone by having to retain part of Robert de Cotte’s appalingly insensitive and destructive 18th century scheme, or such parts that had survived the revolutionary period, and then add pieces in a strangely bloodless and mechanistic neo-Gothic.
A (rare) occasion when a clean-sweep would have been preferable.
On the subject of Christmas book recommendations, I also bring to general attention (again) this wonderful book on Sir Ninian Comper by the Jesuit Anthony Symondson.
Comper represents, for me, the consumation of the mastery of appropriating traditions and of making these his own, making an unmistakably individual language of Catholic architecture. (If that’s not a ham-fisted way of putting it.)
Buy it, buy copies for your friends!
I’d thought I’d bring to attention a book on British Catholic churches that was launched last night. My boss came in to the office today with a copy.
It’s not available yet on Amazon, is much longer than 96 pages, has great and rich illustrations, including of many chapels and churches I’d never knew existed, many that are well-known and a decent text containing a few barbs directed against some of the more egregious reorderings. It puts all the buildings into some sort of context. I wholeheartedly endorse it, for what it’s worth.
