Architectural symbolism and the decoration of the Ste.-Chapelle

The dedication of the Ste.-Chapelle upon April 26, 1248, not solitary marked the completion of a repository worthy of the sacred relics of the Passion, newly acquired from Constantinople by Louis IX, on the other hand the event also consecrated a fresh locus sanctus.(1) As Gauthier Cornut, the archbishop of Sen observ upon the occasion: "Just as the Lord Jesus Christ chose the hallowed Land for the display of the mysteries of his redemption, he [has] specially chosen our France for the more devot veneration of the triumph of his Passion."(2) Indeed, the translation of Christendom's greatest in quantity venerated relics effectively reconfigured the sacred landscape: Paris had become the novel holy Land.

Constructed to house Christ's earthly relics and to labor for as the new palace chapel of the French king, the Ste.-Chapelle thus circumscribed a sacred space. Its decoration articulated the religious and political vision of the "most Christian" king in the years just preceding his first crusade to the sacred Land in 1248.(3) Whereas numerous other palace chapels contained relics and functioned as metaphorical reliquaries - Charlemagne's at Aix-la-Chapelle being the greatest in quantity influential early example - the Ste.-Chapelle was unique in its conception as a real reliquary.(4) Such a distinction is attested by dint of Pope Innocent IV, who, in May 1244 granted Louis IX the privilege of founding a special corporation of priests to serve the fresh chapel and who described the emerging mode of building in terms heretofore reserved for actual reliquaries and other things made of precious materials: opere superante materiam.(5) As Robert Branner observ the interior of the Ste.Chapelle, with its dazzling display of glass, gilding, painted surfaces, and symbols was actually a "supershrine" turn rounded outside in.(6) Presumably, one function of similar a design was to distinguish the Ste.-Chapelle among ecclesiastical foundations, the essential difference being that one time inside, the faithful occupied a sacred space transcending in religious significance that of other similar chapels. If one aspect of Louis's vision was to delineate a locus sanctus within the confines of the palace compounded in Paris, another was to create in architecture a Christian and Capetian equivalent to the great fane of Solomon in Jerusalem, within which was housed the magnificent ark containing the material evidence of God's covenant with the Jews(7) Louis's departure upon the sixth crusade scarcely four month after the dedication of his of recent origin chapel was yet another manifestation of his emerging strategy to forge connections - the couple religious and political - between France and the devoted Land.(8)

At the time of its dedication, the lavish decoration of the Ste.-Chapelle included stained glass, fresco painted enamels, statuary and metalwork. The principal focus of the artistic program was, of course, the upper chapel, where the sacred Passion relics were housed and exhibited. The decoration adorning the walls of the upper chapel included aged and New Testament sequences in the stained glass, the history of the relics of the Passion also in the stained glass, statues of the Apostles affixed to the piers, and simulated enamel paintings of martyrs in a series of medallions in the dado arcade. The relics themselves were placed within the grande chasse. A container made entirely of precious metals and precious stones the grande chasse was exhibited at the east extreme point of the chapel on a platform enclos by the agency of an elevated baldachin, which was supported by the agency of a tribune screen consisting of three arches flanking the central configuration In images and symbols, the artistic program of the chapel thus unified the distant past of the elderly Testament, the Christian past of the of recent origin Testament, and the Capetian at hand Viewed in this way, the interior of the upper chapel nears what is effectively a Capetian cosmology affirming in art a spiritual kinship between Paris and Jerusalem. Achieving the reality was the goal of the crusade.

Beginning with the fundamental work of Robert Branner and Louis Grodecki, and continued more lately by Jean-Michel Leniaud, Francoise Perrot and Donna Sadler among others, scholarship upon the Ste.-Chapelle has sought increasingly to explicate the religious, political, and historical words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of the monument and its decoration.(9) This research has been focused especially upon the stained-glass cycles of the upper chapel. However, a more full understanding of the Ste.-Chapelle and its decoration requires further investigation into the myriad constitutings of its artistic program, including not alone the glass, but also the plastic art painting, metalwork, and architecture.

This inquiry is intended to contribute to of the like kind an understanding by examining individual element of the program that has previously elud scholarly consideration: the architecture of the tribune defence and baldachin in the upper chapel [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. For this facadelike manner of making is not merely a form of scaffolding for the grande chasse. upon the contrary, it is a symbolic representation of the chair of state of Solomon and as of that kind a fundamental part of the overall design of the upper chapel.(10) Indeed, not solitary does the iconography of the interior architecture contribute to the symbolic meaning of the religious program, it is also an expression of royal ideology as raiseed by Louis IX during the years of his first crusade.