Hanging in the 'Hood

I've mentioned that we're living very near the Pont Neuf, which despite its name ("New Bridge" in French) is the oldest bridge in Paris.  When it was finished in 1601 it was the newest and has managed to hang onto that designation despite the many bridges that have followed.  The fellow in the photo above is one of the faces found at the base of the ornate lampposts that line the bridge.  He looks rather like a river god, don't you think?  As if he should have strands of algae dripping from his beard.

He's not the only bearded figure on the bridge.  It was completed during the reign of my favorite monarch, Henri IV, who sits twinkly-eyed on his horse in the middle of the bridge, just above the stairs that descend to a pretty little park named after him, the Square du Vert Galant.  It's not in the shape of a square, by the way.  The French seem not to have grasped the fact that the word actually refers to a shape in English, and name many spots that might more reasonably be called a 'place' a 'square' without reference to whether it has four relatively even sides.

We've had relatively clement weather recently, and as you can tell from the photo of Henri, some bright sunny skies, but the norm is more like today's gray, shading from shifting gray skies through darker gray buildings down to paller gray water.  And the water is patrolled by these people, the sapeurs/pompiers responsible for accidents and incidents on the river.  Here they're speeding along in their bright red wetsuits on their way to something or other.  I see them snorkeling on the surface from time to time, looking for who knows what...not bodies, I fervently hope.

Looking the other direction is you-know-who, in her daytime gray, nearly blending into the other shades of the same color.  The two little pointy bits, looking almost like the spikes on the Kaiser's helmet, are the roofs of the Musée d'Orsay.

On the wall of the building at the Left Bank anchorage of the Pont Neuf is one of the ubiquitous plaques commemorating events, usually deaths of resistants, during the liberation of Paris in August 1944.  This plaque is a bit different from those others however.  It marks the site of the command post established by the commander of the F.F.I. (Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur) the resistance organisation that functioned as a virtual branch of the French Army.  It's just across the river from the Police Station that was a major point of resistance during those August days.

Our current home is in the midst of a nest of art galleries between the Seine and Boulevard Saint-Germain and most of them feature contemporary art.  I was struck by the ancient exposed beam serving as the lintel of this very modern gallery space, and serving as well as a very clear example of how things change here more through re-use rather than through destruction.

 

I much prefer this view from my café seat than a line of glass and steel buildings.  From the second floor up I could be in the 18th century.  The modern facades below this are a small price to pay for the preservation of the fabric of the neighborhood.  And some of the art is quite good.

Cold Comfort

I did say, if you remember, that we'd get some culture as soon as the weather turned cold. Well, it has and we have.  Suddenly, yesterday, it was cold.  Not cool, not chilly, but cold, as in get out the down jackets and mufflers cold.  We'd been meaning to go to the Venetian art exhibit at the Louvre and this seemed a good time to do it.

The sky was a bright, bright blue as we entered the I.M Pei-designed pyramid and descended into the sea of other museum goers, and the colors stayed bright in the Tintoretto, Titian and Veronese exhibition, which tried to explain the rivalries and similarities among these three.  Frankly I want to see the paintings and I get bored by the cultured British voices telling me things I don't particularly want to know, so I passed on getting an audioguide and moved through the crowd relying on the signage, which was really quite good.  The paintings ranged from mythological allegory (lots of Danaë being showered with gold) to incisive portraits of the powerful of the time.  I came across one portrait of a father with his young son leaning against his leg that I recalled seeing at another exhibition at the Luxembourg Palace several years ago.  It was like meeting an old friend.

I find I love attending exhibitions in Paris.  There are always lots of women of a certain age explaining things to each other, pointing out the shading here, and how the foreshortening in this painting made it much more interesting than the one next to it, and of course you must see the painting by Pietro So and So in Hamburg to really understand...  I get such a kick out of eavesdropping I sometimes follow them around just to hear the end of the dicussion.

I had never given much thought to how much people who could no longer see art might miss it. There was one woman walking around with a man who was obviously visually impaired to some severe degree.  She read him the notes next to each painting and told him what she thought.  It was wonderful, touching and perfectly ordinary.

Another cold morning as we woke today, and we took off for Fontainebleau, where an exhibit of contemporary design was contrasted with the furniture and objets in the archive collection of the Chateau.  The modern pieces seemed to be just plopped down in some of the rooms of the Chateau and that meant you had to walk through the entire building to see them.  It wasn't very successful as an exhibition, but the Chateau is great.

Unlike Versailles, which seems like Disneyland for the Bourbons, Fontainebleau makes me believe Francois I and Henry IV and the others actually lived there, with all their complicated wives and mistresses.  It is, if you can say this about a giant castle, homier than Versailles.  And there are some lovely things in it; busts of the great kings, carvings of real and imaginary beings, monograms of the battling Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici, tapestries, paintings, porcelain.

This painted fabric feels like you could wrap yourself in it right now, doesn't it?  And stand looking through the waving glass of this window imagining the 16th century, the same time, I realize now, that those three painters in Venice were busily competing with each other.

St-Germain l'Auxerrois

With a few minutes to spare before meeting a friend for lunch at Le Fumoir, just behind the Louvre, we stopped in at the church of St-Germain l'Auxerrois .

This church, said to have been founded in the 7th century to mark the passing of Saint Germain, has been rebuilt and added to many times, but its primary claim to fame, or infamy, is its bell, which rang out in 1573 to call Catholics to begin the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of Protestant Huguenots, many of whom had gathered in Paris to celebrate the marriage of Catholic Marguerite de Valois, the daughter of Catherine de Medici and sister of the king, to the Protestant Henri III of Navarre, later to become Henri IV of France.

It's a long and complicated story of betrayal and violence and death, culminating in Henri's famous conversion to Catholicism in order to become king, with the decision that "Paris vaut bien une messe" (Paris is worth a mass). There's a movie called la Reine Margot (Queen Margot in English) that tells at least part of this story, starring Isabelle Adjani as Margot and Daniel Auteuil as Henri, with Vincent Perez as one of her many lovers. I can't vouch for its historical correctness, but it's gorgeous and steamy, well worth watching. Henri, by the way, turned out to be a great king with an eye for the ladies himself. One of his nicknames is le Vert Galant, and there's a nice statue of him on the point of the Ile de la Cité near the Pont Neuf.

Speaking of statues, it's the stonecutter's art that I want to talk about, because there are wonderful examples of it all over the exterior of St-Germain l'Auxerrois. A series of standing saints and priests are supported by a series of demons and sinners, each individual and distinct. You'd recognize these fellows if you met them in the street.







The usual dragons and demons and scary creatures are here and there over the various arches and entries.

And the effort involved in the least little thing is striking. These folds!


I'm not sure who this cleric is, but blessings galore would be needed to make up for the bloody deeds done in the name of this church. The street on which it sits, by the way, is rue de l'Amiral Coligny, named for an Admiral of the French fleet and leader of the Huguenots who was killed in the Massacre. It's the least they could do, non?