Notre-Dame in Color
Division of Research Programs
Dr. Jennifer Feltman, associate professor of medieval art and architecture, and Dr. Alexandre Tokovinine, associate professor of anthropology, documenting sculptures from Notre Dame at the Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University.
Photo by J. Caldwell, Nasher Museum. Courtesy the University of Alabama
Dr. Jennifer Feltman, associate professor of medieval art and architecture, and Dr. Alexandre Tokovinine, associate professor of anthropology, documenting sculptures from Notre Dame at the Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University.
Photo by J. Caldwell, Nasher Museum. Courtesy the University of Alabama
The medieval statuary that adorns the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, was once brightly painted. Angels and saints sported flesh-toned faces and pink cheeks, the robes of Christ and prophets were brilliantly blue, and underpainting added shadows and highlights to sculptures that changed their perceived shape. While the 2019 fire that devastated the cathedral caused untold damage, it also offered an opportunity for scholars to analyze surviving statues and architectural features for traces of this lost pigmentation.
At the University of Alabama, a collaborative team of researchers in art history, archaeology, and musicology are working with specialists in architecture, 3D modeling, and lab researchers at Paris’ Sorbonne Université in an attempt to discover and reconstruct what Notre-Dame may have looked like in the Middle Ages as part of an NEH-supported project called “Notre Dame in Color: Interpreting the Layers of Polychromy on the Sculptures of the Cathedral of Paris Using 3D Modeling.”
The group is working with data gathered from the cathedral façade during restoration campaigns in the 1980s and 90s, as well as new scans of statues removed during previous renovations that are now held in museums and archives, to better understand the Gothic practice of painting statues. Their analysis will inform the creation of a 3D model showing layers of paint on the exterior sculptures of Notre-Dame that will include materials science data on the chemical composition of the paint layers and stone type, accompanied by archival materials referencing the use of color at the cathedral.
Stratigraphic sample showing layers of lead white, yellow ochre, and azurite.
The project’s director, Jennifer Feltman, is a member of the Chantier scientifique de Notre Dame, a collective of scholars working on elements of the reconstruction and restoration of Notre-Dame after the devastating 2019 fire. Feltman has been part of both the effort’s “Stone” and “Décor” working groups.
Feltman, Jeremiah Stager, Tokovinine and Dr. Gregory Chaumet of Sorbonne Université documenting sculptures from Notre Dame at the Musée de Cluny in Paris.
Photo by Gabby Chitwood, University of Oregon. Courtesy University of Alabama
Feltman, Jeremiah Stager, Tokovinine and Dr. Gregory Chaumet of Sorbonne Université documenting sculptures from Notre Dame at the Musée de Cluny in Paris.
Photo by Gabby Chitwood, University of Oregon. Courtesy University of Alabama