Religion, Culture, and Art

The Cathedral of Notre-Dame

After the death of Louis XVI, the revolutionaries did everything they could to denounce the old regime, and this included attacking the Church. One offensive was destroying the statues of saints at the cathedral of Notre-Dame. The cathedral lies at the eastern edge of the city of Paris. It was built on the grounds of two earlier churches from the Gallo-Roman days. Pope Alexander III began construction of the cathedral in 1153. The choir, the western façade, and the nave were completed by 1250. Over the next one hundred years, an assortment of ornamentation was added to it. It is mostly Gothic in style, with two Gothic towers and numerous Gothic carvings. Medieval masons developed the Gothic style as a way to alleviate the pressure on the outside walls exerted by the Romanesque-arched barrel vault. The creation of ribbed vaults and flying buttresses allowed medieval architects to build much higher ceilings and include stained glass windows that allowed more natural light into the building. The height of these huge churches compelled visitors to look upward, creating in them a feeling of relative insignificance as they gazed toward the heavens and God. Adding to this effect were the many stained glass windows that often contained images from the Bible. In this way, they served to teach visitors biblical passages (because most people living in the Middle Ages were illiterate), while also making them feel as though they were closer to heaven as the beautiful colored light poured into the cathedral. In addition to the use of tall ceilings and walls of stained glass, Gothic architecture used a number of decorative features, such as high spires, rose windows, gargoyles, and pointed arches. Students in Core Knowledge schools may recall having learned about Notre-Dame in Grade 4 during their study of Medieval Europe. It is now one of the most prominent cathedrals in France and one of the oldest ones, too.

The New Revolutionary Calendar

After the fall of the ancien régime, French revolutionaries implemented changes to eliminate artifacts and practices associated with it and the monarchy. This drive to align French institutions with new republican ideals inspired them to create a new calendar to replace the old Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian calendar is the calendar we use today. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. It replaced the Julian calendar, which did not account for the tropical year, or the time that it takes for Earth to circle the sun. The Gregorian calendar introduced events such as the equinoxes and solstices, proposed leap years to account for uneven years, and created new rules for calculating Easter dates. The new Revolutionary calendar omitted any reference to Christian affiliations, such as saints’ names and reference to the birth of Christ. The new calendar started year one in 1792, the year the official republic was proclaimed. The months were named after natural elements, and the days were named after secular objects, such as seeds, flowers, animals, and tools. The new Revolutionary calendar was in existence for a little more than ten years, until Napoleon abandoned its use on January 1, 1806.

French Neoclassicism

From the 1720s on, a style called Rococo dominated European art. It was a very frivolous and highly decorative style that appealed to the senses. Toward the late 1700s, a new art movement evolved— partly as a reaction to the extravagant Rococo style, and partly brought on by a new interest in classical

1 antiquity. Recent exploration and excavations of the Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii (buried from volcanic eruptions) spurred this interest in classical art forms. Inspired by the plentiful examples of ancient Greek and Roman architecture and sculpture, the new movement strongly influenced French architecture and sculpture of the period. In addition, neoclassical artists recreated paintings unearthed in the excavations of Herculaneum amd Pompeii. Increasingly, scenes of Greek and Roman heroes, the figures themselves, and the general composition of classical art became the subject of neoclassical paintings.

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David was born in Paris in 1748. He was orphaned at a young age and raised by two uncles. He was educated in classical literature, and his creative talents were discovered early. He worked in several studios as he was growing up and attended the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. His four years there did not go well, but he was able to obtain a government scholarship to study art in Rome. There, he flourished. His paintings showed a Rococo-style influence, along with his Greco- Roman tastes from his earlier studies. His turn to a strong neoclassical style was the result of a visit to the ruins at Herculaneum and Pompeii. He returned to Paris, where he became an acclaimed artist and earned fame for his 1784 painting, Oath of the Horatii. He became so popular that some even considered him a cultural hero, or messiah. When the French Revolution started in 1789, he was appointed as artistic director and commissioned to paint the leaders and martyrs of the Revolution. He used his art in revolutionary propaganda. Several of his paintings created for this purpose were never finished—one, a tribute to a drummer boy who was killed by royalist troops; the other, a sketched depiction of the Tennis Court Oath. His most famous piece related to the Revolution is The Death of Marat, which he painted in 1793 shortly after the murder of the revolutionary leader. Jean-Paul Marat Jean-Paul Marat was the voice of the most radical and democratic methods of the revolutionaries in the French Revolution. Of Swiss decent, he was a French politician, a physician, and a journalist. His writings spurred anti-royal, anti-aristocratic sentiment. He aligned his ideals with those of Montesquieu and Rousseau, and attacked despotism with zeal. He initially believed that the monarchy was capable of solving France’s problems, but after the first few months of the French Revolution, he concluded that the king was too wrapped up in his own personal financial struggles to attend to the needs of the French people. Marat’s most famous publication was a newspaper called The Friend of the People. This was his avenue for championing preventive measures against aristocrats and for warning against royalist exiles, who he believed were organizing counterrevolutionary activities with the hopes of restoring full power to Louis XVI. His conviction that the monarchy should be terminated strengthened in 1790 and 1791. He became a delegate of the National Convention and through his efforts of reform, gained the attention of many supporters, both in the chamber and on the streets of Paris. But he also had his enemies. A member of an opposing faction, Charlotte Corday, gained entry into Marat’s house and murdered him in his bathtub. (As a result of hiding in the sewers, Marat had a skin infection that required frequent baths.) He was considered a martyr of the French Revolution and was immortalized in Jacques-Louis David’s painting.

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