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Chopped-off heads and other Paris treasures on show
AFP - Thursday, February 11
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Like the statues of Saddam Hussein toppled during the US invasion of Iraq, so too did the stone heads of kings on Paris' majestic Notre-Dame cathedral fall, chopped off during the French Revolution.
PARIS (AFP) - – Like the statues of Saddam Hussein toppled during the US invasion of Iraq, so too did the stone heads of kings on Paris' majestic Notre-Dame cathedral fall, chopped off during the French Revolution.
For nearly two centuries, the kings' heads lay hidden in the foundations of a Paris bank before work to upgrade the bank's computer system in 1977 led to the extraordinary discovery of the lost treasure.
The regal heads and some 200 other pieces taken from magnificent Paris buildings -- some of which are coming out of storage for the first time -- go on show this week in Paris at the Cluny Museum.
The exhibition looks at Paris in the 13th century, home to the "rayonnant" style of architecture that became all the rage in France and ricocheted across European art.
Little is left however of the original architecture from cathedrals like Notre-Dame and or the exquisite Sainte-Chapelle chapel, except at the Cluny museum, now the keeper of Paris' medieval past.
"They beheaded them quite nicely. The cut at the neck is neat," commented curator Xavier Dectot, standing next to the disfigured and partly destroyed statues.
Dectot drew a comparison between the statues of Saddam knocked off their pedestals in Baghdad in 2003 and the campaign by zealous revolutionaries in Paris.
"They wanted to get rid of political symbols and so they did," he said.
All of the figurative sculptures at the Gothic chapel of Sainte-Chapelle on Ile de la Cite -- an island in the Seine in the heart of Paris -- were damaged during the Revolution and a third of the windows lost when it was converted into a library, said curator Meredith Cohen.
After decades of disuse and disrepair, Sainte-Chapelle underwent extensive renovation from 1836 to 1870, and some of its structures were salvaged such as mullions adorned with sculpted foliage, shown to the public for the first time in the exhibition.
Paris in the 13th century was a booming city of 50,000 people, ruled early on by Philip Augustus who erected new city walls and encouraged building projects such as redoing the entire exterior of Notre-Dame.
About 60 cathedrals and churches were built or restored during that period, in the new style of the day, drawing on improved building techniques that allowed thinner walls and bigger windows.
"This is when Paris earned its reputation as a place of avant-garde," said Cohen.
The Revolution and subsequent urban renewal projects have however erased some of the masterpieces and the search for lost treasures from that era continues.
Decapitated statues of saints from Notre Dame -- again the work of Revolutionaries to protest the alliance of church and state -- were found in the late 1930s, buried under an old Paris marketplace.
Work on a new parking lot on the Left Bank in 1990 yielded another stunning find: a cracked statue of the Virgin Mary that had been intended for the Lady Chapel of Saint-Germain-des-Pres.
The chapel was flattened in 1802, but the portico with its detailed sculptures of leaves has been preserved at the Cluny.
When publishing giant Hachette built a large book store on the Left Bank in the mid-1900s, it stumbled on 50 Jewish tombstones testifying to the thriving Jewish presence in the city before they were expelled in the early 14th century.
The tombstones are on show at the Cluny, confirming the historic ethnic vitality of Paris.
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