Revisiting the themes of the Middle Ages in Notre Dame

Anyone willing to climb the 386 steps of the north tower of Notre Dame Cathedral can see Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-leDuc's winged vampire. With his hook nose, horns and dangling tongue, he sits chin in hands, contemplating Paris. There is a vulture wearing monk's robes, a feline monster devouring a human, and among the Bosch-like crazed faces and dragons, a homely elephant and a pelican.

Viollet-le-Duc's critics reproach him for inventing the fantastical creatures of Notre Dame 600 years after the cathedral was built. But research by the art historian Solange Michon shows that for every motif Viollet-le-Duc had a reference in the Middle Ages, usually an illuminated manuscript.

In a recent lecture at the French National Museum of the Middle Ages, Michon explained Viollet-le-Duc's philosophy. For the architects of the Middle Ages, the cathedral represented an encyclopaedia of the world.

Viollet-le-Duc himself wrote that "the qualities or faults of each animal were presented as a symbol of the state of the human soul, of its vices or its virtues . . ."

Ms Michon was teaching a course on mediaeval art at the University of Berne when she realised the importance of the French architect, writer and historian, who lived from 1814 until 1879.

With a grant from the Swiss government, the 43 year-old Franco-Swiss mediaevalist has devoted the past four years to her hero's oeuvre, particularly his restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral. She is writing a book entitled Viollet-le-Duc, Iconographer and Image-maker of the Middle Ages.

"No one really studied the Middle Ages until the 19th century," Ms Michon explains. "Art history as a discipline began then."

Viollet-le-Duc wrote dictionaries of mediaeval architecture, furniture and clothing, illustrated with his own drawings. "He knew the Middle Ages better than anyone of his time," Ms Michon says. "I doubt if anyone today knows the period as well as he did."

The conservation of historic monuments also began in the 19th century, thanks mainly to Victor Hugo's best-selling 1831 novel Notre Dame de Paris. "Hugo made people realise that the cathedral was in a state of ruin," Ms Michon explains. "The central character is the building of Notre Dame itself. Page after page, he pleaded for its salvation."

Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus won a competition among architects for the job of saving Notre Dame. Lassus died in 1857, but Violletle-Duc spent 21 years, from 1844 until 1865, restoring the cathedral. "He was harshly criticised," Ms Michon says. "People believed he put too much of his own philosophy and creativity into it. He is still very controversial today." Nothing enrages her more than art historians who call Viollet-le-Duc a criminal.

To replace the mediaeval statuary destroyed in the French revolution, Viollet-le-Duc drew more than 500 designs which he had carved by a team of sculptors. "Today it would be unthinkable to put new statues on an old building," Ms Michon admits. "It was a Romantic idea, and Viollet-le-Duc succeeded in recreating the spirit of the 13th century."

For the Virgin, apostles and other human figures, Viollet-le-Duc took inspiration from the cathedrals of Bordeaux, Amiens and Chartres. He knew from pre-revolution engravings that a menagerie of monsters had inhabited the upper gallery of Notre Dame.

Ms Michon quotes a passage from Victor Hugo's novel which she believed influenced the architect. Quasimodo has set fire to the cathedral: ". . . innumerable sculptures of devils and dragons took on a lugubrious aspect. The uneasy light of the flame made them move before the eye. There were serpents that seemed to laugh.

"One thought one heard the gargoyles yelping, salamanders puffing in the fire, dragons that sneezed in the smoke. And among these monsters, woken from their stone slumber by the flame and noise, there was one who walked and whom one saw from time to time, passing through the bonfire like a bat before a candle."

The Middle Ages exert a strange power over those who study it. When he rebuilt Notre Dame's steeple, Viollet-le-Duc added a bronze statue of himself in mediaeval clothing, gazing up at the spire.

Ms Michon doesn't go that far, but she did spend five years learning to paint illuminated manuscripts on calfskin parchment, with ground lapis lazuli stone for the blue robes of the Virgin, gold leaf, and egg white and tree resins for binders. A facsimile of the Book of Kells is one of her prized possessions.

Ms Michon never wearies of visiting Notre Dame. "Each time I go, I discover something new," she says. "Already in the Middle Ages, people were conscious that the contemplation of beauty relieves sadness. The themes of the Middle Ages are relevant today: the mystery of the human being, humour, spirituality. But also the dark and the grotesque."