Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [231]
A good article to read before heading to Auvers is “Impressionist Visions near Paris” by Dana Micucci (New York Times, July 7, 2002). Micucci writes “I left Auvers-sur-Oise feeling that I had discovered the quintessential French village, overflowing with authentic rural charm and richly layered with culture and history.”
CHARTRES
A visit to the town and cathedral of Chartres is an easy half- or full-day trip from Paris. “There is nothing comparable to the brilliance of Chartres’ windows—not even the mosaics of Byzantium,” notes Joseph Barry in The People of Paris. “Even without knowing the difference between Gothic architecture and the more earth-bound Romanesque from which it sprang, one can still sense the spiritual life of its vaults.” Barry, “an architectural traveler with a pair of powerful field glasses rather than a pilgrim with a prayer book,” recommends that travelers visit at twilight, when “all is calm and timeless. The gray of the sky merges with the warm gray of the stones.… Softly, dramatically, the night-lighting of the great cathedral commences.”
I’ve been to Chartres only once, and unfortunately it wasn’t at twilight; rather, it was on a gray, overcast day, but what was remarkable to me was that the famous blue in the stained-glass windows was still really blue, a shade completely unlike any other, as if light were shining through it. Robert Payne, in The Splendor of France, comments that throughout French history there has been an intense devotion to light, which for the French was “the purest joy, and they celebrated their joy in stained-glass windows, in brilliantly colored books and dresses, in Impressionist painting, in a continuing debate on the nature of light, in endless speculations on its strange and exhilarating behavior, as though it were a living thing. Because the light was feminine, and desired to please and to be seen, they opened up the walls of their cathedrals to let it in, and because the light was self-conscious and determined to be shown in its utmost splendor, they filled the windows with those thousands of pieces of colored glass, as thin as wafers, which are the great glory of medieval France.”
Chartres definitely vaut le détour, and three worthy resources are:
“Seeing the Light in Chartres,” Joan Gould (New York Times, December 18, 1988).
Chartres Cathedral, Malcolm Miller with color photographs by Sonia Halliday and Laura Lushington (Riverside, 1997). Miller has been leading tours to the cathedral for many decades almost every day without exception. Inquire at the office de tourisme (Place de la Cathédrale) or contact him directly (millerchartres@aol.com / +33 02 37 28 15 58).
Universe of Stone, Philip Ball (Harper, 2008). In this thorough book, Ball admits that it’s somewhat foolhardy to talk about “why” Chartres Cathedral was built, but that is what he attempts to do. Only by confronting that question, he believes, can we fully experience all this cathedral has to offer. “There seems to be little point,” he notes, “in knowing that you are standing in the south transept or looking at St. Lubin in the stained glass or gazing at a vault boss a hundred feet above your head unless you have some conception of what was in the minds of the people who created all of this.” (And a “boss,” by the way, is an architectural term that refers to a generally round, carved element located at the central crossing point of the ribs in Gothic vaults.)
Fontainebleau Postcard
My friend Ruth Homberg recently moved to Fontainebleau with her husband, Peter, so I asked her for some suggestions for