Following the exhibition Things – A History of Still Life in 2022-2023, the Etrillard Foundation is once again supporting the Louvre Museum for its exhibition The Treasure of Notre-Dame de Paris: From its Origins to Viollet-le-Duc, presented from October 18, 2023, to January 29, 2024.
Jean-Alexandre Chertier after Viollet-le-Duc, Bust of Saint Louis. © Louvre Museum, Guillaume Benoit
As the restoration work on the cathedral enters its final phase, the Louvre Museum is dedicating an unprecedented exhibition to the treasure of Notre-Dame de Paris.
This treasure, which brings together the objects and sacerdotal vestments necessary for religious celebration, relics and reliquaries, manuscript books, and other precious items offered out of devotion, will subsequently return to the cathedral’s neo-Gothic sacristy, built by Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc from 1845 to 1850 to house them.
Châteauroux Breviary for the Use of Paris by Louis de Guyenne, Châteauroux Municipal Library © Équinoxe Media Library, City of Châteauroux, CNRS – IRHT
Featuring over 120 works, this exhibition offers a condensed history of this treasure by placing them within the context of its thousand-year history: from its origins in the Middle Ages to its resurrection in the 19th century and its flourishing under Viollet-le-Duc during the Second Empire.
The exhibition is curated by four Louvre Museum curators: Jannic Durand, Anne Dion-Tenenbaum, Florian Meunier, and Michèle Bimbenet-Privat.
Placide Poussielgue-Rusand after Viollet-le-Duc, Reliquary of the Holy Crown of Thorns, 1862. © Louvre Museum, Guillaume Benoit; Crosier said to come from Notre-Dame de Paris, circa 1200. Department of Coins, Medals and Antiques. Bibliothèque nationale de France. © BNF
This exhibition is part of the Etrillard Foundation’s patronage in favor of the rediscovery of the Middle Ages, which includes the restoration of two precious reliquaries from the Saint-Maurice Abbey in Valais (Switzerland) or the support of medieval vocal practice through the Chanter l’Ars Nova program with the Royaumont Abbey and Foundation.
Jean-Alexandre Chertier after Viollet-le-Duc, Chrismatory: dove for the Holy Oils, 1866. © Louvre Museum, Guillaume Benoit