International news

Viollet-le-Duc, an architect's vision

November 20, 2014-March 9, 2015

The Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine in Paris - the Museum of Architecture and Heritage - occupies more than 22,000 square meters inside the Palais de Chaillot in the 16th arrondissement, making it the largest architecture center in the world. This structure, dedicated to the promotion of architecture - both heritage and contemporary French architecture - was created in 2007 by bringing together three historic institutions of the French capital: The Ecole de la Chaillot (1887-), the French Institute of Architecture (1981-) and the Museum of French Monuments (1882-), the latter, originally known as the Museum of Comparative Sculpture, was founded by Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), an emblematic 19th-century figure, architect, theorist and restorer. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth, from 20 November 2014, the museum is organizing a major retrospective, offering the general public the opportunity to discover through seven previously unseen "sequences" a portrait that is on the one hand professional, but above all intimate and complex. The first part of the exhibition is punctuated by three "visions" (presented to the public through a carefully staged multimedia device) that have marked the architect since the tender age of three, when he stood in front of the southern rose in Notre Dame Cathedral, and then, at the age of 22, when he visited the Colosseum and the Sistine Chapel in Rome. These powerful emotions, which he would describe in detail half a century later, would guide his rich artistic and architectural career without, however, pushing him towards a normal academic path. Under the guidance of his uncle, the painter and art critic Étienne-Jean Delécluze, the young Viollet-le-Duc developed a particular artistic virtuosity in reproducing architectural monuments during his "picturesque travels" in France (1831) and then in Italy (1836-1837). Together with a series of documents attesting to his first experiences on various restoration sites, many exceptional watercolors bear witness to this intense period of artistic exploration. The second part of the exhibition presents some of his most important restoration projects, such as the Saint-Chapelle du Palais (1840) and the controversial Notre Dame Church (1843-1864). Including an exceptional collection of ten objects made by the architect for the treasury of Notre Dame Cathedral, the sequences dedicated to the architect's maturity emphasize the Gothic period as the central theme of his research. In a final 'sequence' of a pedagogical nature, part of the ornamental room of the Museum of Comparative Sculpture is faithfully reconstructed, recalling the legacy left by this architect to the current Museum of Architecture and Heritage.