Monsters of Modernity

It was about a year ago that I went downstairs to the packing department with our Museum Education Summer Interns. The packing department, headed by Johnny Mo, one of the biggest personalities at the AIC, is in charge of creating boxes, crates, foam supports and anything else needed to customize a container capable of handling and protecting its charge for shipment.

On an unassuming wheeled cart, lay an opened red crate. The interior was cut, molded and shaped into the perfect nest to hold a work that I knew but had only ever seen in print. It is a early 13th century limestone sculpture, a fragment of a head, that used to be on view but was taken down before my time here. But there it was. Though its temporary home (its carriage if you will) was by no means paltry, the experience of seeing a work of art in such a modest context, outside of the glass vitrines, dramatic lighting, laser alarms that BEEP! at you if you get too close was unnerving. I could even touch it were the terror of doing so not rending my feeble hands temporarily paralyzed.



It's about 17 inches tall. From a smooth elongated face, two almond-shaped eyes look out past you. The artist has chiseled in fine hairs to make up furry eyebrows but has given this head glossy-magazine-worthy hair that would be the envy of any one affecting the likes of a Hollywood version of a Mountain Man. From the widow's peak down to the beard, the hair spills down in curls and waves. But this is no Charlton Heston as Moses in the 1956 epic, The Ten Commandments, it's the lopped off head of an apostle from the west façade of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

It was no small beans to get to this state in the research, in fact, the story behind this decapitated don is quite a saga.

In 1944 the Art Institute of Chicago acquired this piece from a New York collector. It became one of the most important examples of Gothic sculpture in the museum's collection. But where did it come from before its jaunt in NYC? Legend has it that the cropped cranium was discovered in 1852 during an excavation of the crossing of the Boulevard Haussmann and Boulevard Malesherbes in Paris. From 1943 onwards Notre Dame cathedral underwent several restorations, many headed by the imaginative medievalist Viollet-le-Duc. Many were pleased to see the Gothic cathedral scrapped clean of grime. Others were more skeptical, as writes Bertrall from Le journal amusant in 1856:

At least Gothic monuments do not loose in this [restoration] their appearance of venerable antiquity, keeping their beautiful lines and elegant proportions, but what can one say of the restoration of the old statues that decorate them? The majority no longer have their noses; moreover, on these thin sulfurous, ecstatic dreamers have added the nose of the Apollo Belvedere [classical Greek sculpture unearthed in the 19th c.], this straight nose diving the face, this sensual nose, a pagan nose, a nose that would serve to damn this wise man who presents himself thus re-nosed at the day of judgment. And this newest nose that one could make stands out on the blackened faces [from pollution], strikes the eye, troubles the contemplative spirit, evoking goodness knows what idea of masquerade--Gothic with a false nose.

It would seem that our head did not meet such a fate. In fact, after the head was excavated it was transferred to the basement of Notre Dame for storage and there he snoozed until 1900. Little documentation exists concerning this excavation. Was it an excavation or was it unearthed during the extensive rebuilding of Paris led by the Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann (namesake of the Boulevard near the excavation site).

But we still haven't accounted for where it came from. One clue might be the obvious--it is just a head. Our beheaded beau may have suffered the same fate as the unfortunate statues of kings past who reigned in the King's Gallery above one of the main tympana on the facade. During the Revolution the Cathedral came to be seen as symbolic of monarchical power and the kings featured were the dynasties of French kings from Childebert I to Phillipe August. So along with the royals and nobles who marched up to the guillotine, the regal sculptures of Notre Dame were also cut short a head. The image to the right is an aquatint from 1804 by Louis Lecoeur depicting the coronation of the imperial kings at the site of Notre Dame. The squared structure in front is ephemeral architecture. It will be torn down after the ceremony. The print embodies the early 19th century association of the cathedral with French Royalty.

For about 40 years art historians battled it out over the origins of this head. Some believed it to be from Sens, others Chartres, others were hesitant to anything more specific than the Il-de-France. One postulated that it wasn't architectural at all but rather from a sarcophagus from Lisieux. Comparisons were brought in. In situ survivals were analyzed and still no one was in agreement.

Enter nuclear science.

Specimens from Notre Dame, Sens and others along with the head underwent Neutron Activation Analysis. This is a process whereby samples are irradiated in a nuclear reactor. A chemist can then analyze trace elements of the stone's mineral composition. The results? The head matched samples from Notre Dame.

The head is presumed to be the head of an Apostle from the Last Judgment Portal. With the 19th century replicas in place it is near impossible to localize which body our head would have capped. But now we know that he did look on to passers by from about 1210 to the last years of the 18th century from the cathedral along the Seine. He missed the Baron Haussmann's digging up and wheel-barrowing away the medieval Paris he once knew. His resurfaced life has been a well traveled one though. He recently got to fly back over Paris on his way to Magdeburg, Germany to appear in an exhibition at the Kulturhistorisches Museum. I, for one, know he traveled first class to get there in his red crate.