exhumed during excavations, the splendid sculptures of the cathedral are revealed at the Cluny museum

Suddenly, a very thin face emerges from the basement, peaceful, with closed eyes. Stéphane Compoint, who photographs the Notre-Dame-de-Paris construction site for The Pilgrim was present at the crossroads of the transept and captured live the discovery of April 5, 2022. He testifies: “We see this sleeping Christ and I then hear an experienced archaeologist say: “it is the greatest emotion of all my career.” For me, it will be the strongest of these almost five years of reporting in the cathedral. »

This face of Christ, a masterpiece of French sculpture from the beginning of the 14th century, when Paris artistically dominated Europe, is today exhibited at the Cluny museum with around forty other beautiful fragments of the rood screen found. Because the emergency excavations carried out by the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) have uncovered “around 40%” of the remains of this sculpted stone wall which closed the choir of the building until the 16th century, estimates archaeologist Christophe Besnier, who led the operation.

In the heart of Paris, the Cluny Museum’s mission is to tell us about the Middle Ages through works of art such as the famous tapestry of the Lady and the Unicorn or even… the sculpted heads of the biblical kings which adorned the gallery of the facade of Notre-Dame de Paris, until the Revolution. Precisely, the restoration of the Gothic cathedral and the rediscovery of its rood screen, give the institution the opportunity to renew its view on these remains of the cathedral which it has exhibited since… 1844. And to offer this exhibition, “Making people talk the stones”, resolutely turned towards the contributions of contemporary science. “Thanks to the analyzes of the limestone, the study of the traces of polychromy of the statues, and a restoration campaign, we have “shaken” this material and brought new knowledge to the surface,” enthusiastically summarizes the curator Damien Berné, commissioner of the ‘exposure.

“Puzzles” being pieced together

Between the “frigidarium”, (cold room inherited from ancient Roman baths) which today serves as a temporary exhibition room and the permanent and adjoining “Notre-Dame room”, the route weaves two threads: it allows you to see a beautiful collection of lapidary remains of Notre-Dame; he describes a “scientific police” investigation into these sculptures. Damien Berné talks about “puzzles” being pieced together. Thus, with a lot of education, panels drawn from an image dating from 1729, allow visitors to locate the statue-columns of the Sainte-Anne portal (to the left of the central portal of the facade). Thanks to a scientific imaging campaign carried out by the Center for Research and Restoration of Museums of France (C2RMF), “ghost inscriptions” – invisible to the naked eye – reappeared which made it possible to identify some of the characters represented . While the Historical Monuments Research Laboratory (LRMH) identified vestiges of painting allowing us to get an idea of the colorful medieval appearance of these statues.

Fragments of the medieval rood screen of Notre-Dame

Of course, presented in the center of the frigidarium, it is the surprises of research around the rood screen which attract the most. Without a doubt, and according to tradition, the destroyed scenes retraced the Passion, while the life of Jesus was told on the fence carved in gilded wood which still surrounds the choir. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the architect who restored Notre-Dame between 1843 and 1862, had already found four elements which appear in the exhibition, even if unlike those discovered today, they have lost their polychromy. This bare torso held by one hand seems to belong to a Descent from the Cross, and the serene face of the “sleeping” Christ evokes his Entombment…

Among the puzzles again, the reconstruction of an illuminated manuscript dating from 1340, the pages of which had been scattered around the world, plays a crucial role: “we realized that the miniatures represented the different scenes of the rood screen and the enclosure , with their legend, says Damien Berné. This will help us to reconstruct the missing parts and sheds new light on the role of the mysterious stone bases that we have preserved since Viollet-le-Duc: they bear the same engraved legend and were to support and explain sculpted scenes. »

The game of identifying characters and scenes continues even behind the scenes of the exhibition since an American specialist (1) has just found another head in a university collection which seems to fit perfectly with one of the busts on display !