Notre Dame Still Not Safe: Macron Pushes Ahead With Replacing Historic Stained Glass That Survived Fire For ‘Contemporary’ Replacement

French President accused of turning storied medieval cathedral into vanity project as he pushes ahead with replacing historic stained glass windows that survived fire intact for his ‘contemporary gesture’.

Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral was badly damaged in the April 2019 fire but was reopened shortly before Christmas following a heroic effort and billions of dollars of donated money to save the building. Fears of a modernist reinterpretation had been set aside, even if some jarringly out-of-place modernist pieces have already made their way inside.

While much of the cathedral was devastated but thanks to fast work by Paris pompiers it did not suffer a total collapse and, incredibly, even stained glass in some side chapels survived the heat. Those historic windows, dating back to the 19th-century restoration of the church and part of a unified overall gothic revival aesthetic by the architect have already been cleaned and restored as part of bringing Notre Dame back to life.

19th century Notre Dame chapel glass by architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc / Bence Kiss-Dobronyi / Unsplash

Yet now they are reportedly on course for removal so President Emmanuel Macron can get his long lusted-for “inventive reconstruction” and “contemporary architectural gesture”. The idea that these surviving stained glass windows might be removed and replaced has long been known, but British newspaper The Observer now notes despite opposition by art, culture, and public figures it is nevertheless now being pushed ahead.

L.A.-based French “figurative” artist Claire Tabouret designed six new windows (pictured, top), replacing six 1844 windows that survived the 2019 fire, and is said to have the backing of both the President of the Republic Macron, and the church. Yet critics note some of the worse architectural and artistic damage done to French religion in modern times has been by the church itself, so their backing the project can be taken to mean little.

The Académie des Beaux-Arts has suggested, for instance, that if Macron is really dead-set on introducing modernist glass to the cathedral that could be done in the fire-damaged north tower, rather than consigning actual historic glass that survived to a museum.

The Observer cites Didier Rykner, heralded by some as France’s ‘self appointed heritage sheriff’ for his impassioned defense of history and a faithful rebuild of Notre Dame, who has called the plan “totally ludicrous”. He told the paper: “To remove windows that survived the fire undamaged and replace them with others is just absurd. I am not against contemporary windows per se but there is just no reason to replace these windows. Besides, money donated by people to renovate Notre Dame has already been spent on cleaning them.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous. We’ve been told they will put the Viollet-le-Duc windows on display in a museum. They don’t belong in a museum – they belong in Notre Dame. It makes no sense for them to be on display anywhere other than the cathedral. Their only interest is in situ.”

Breitbart reported on Rykner’s crusade in 2013 when he blasted the French state for not only having failed to prevent the fire, for having failed to learn lessons from it — putting other heritage buildings at risk — but also for barely investigating the own cause out of fear it would reveal uncomfortable truths.

He said: “No one wants to be responsible for these failures… The companies which were carrying out the work at the time of the fire are the same ones which were taken on for the restoration project. No one therefore has any interest in regaining responsibility.”

As previously reported:

Within days of the blaze, modernist architects — “the concrete lobby and iron lovers” — began circling the still-warm remains, creating ideas for a non-faithful rebuild. Various schemes, some of which were seriously considered, included a glass roof, steel spire, an “erect phallus” surrounded by “golden balls”, and even a swimming pool.

The question of whether to go traditional or modern went back and forth in parliament for months, with the traditionalists eventually winning, but only narrowly.

Read more at Breitbart London.