Nineteenth-Century Restoration Politics:
Recrafting Monarchy in the
Stained Glass Windows of the
Sainte-Chapelle in
Alyce A.
Jordan
The windows
of the Sainte-Chapelle number among the most powerful visual articulations of
monarchic authority espoused during the European Middle Ages. Built as a private palace chapel by Louis IX
to house the Crown of Thorns, the most sacred relic in Christendom and the
nexus of the French claim to sacral kingship, the Sainte-Chapelle contains
windows depicting an elaborate series of biblical narratives that offered a
customized visual treatise on medieval kingship. In the mid-nineteenth century, the chapel
underwent an extensive renovation. Its
ensemble of stained glass windows—a third of which had been destroyed in the
wake of the French Revolution—were painstakingly studied and restored in what
was widely publicized as the most scrupulous glass restoration to date. In the course of this campaign, the scenes the
windows contained were reorganized and new scenes created to replace those that
had been destroyed.
These
restored, reorganized and newly completed windows, I argue, effectively
proffered new narratives—stories that spoke to the political agendas and
monarchic preoccupations of kings Louis-Philippe and his successor Louis
Napoleon (both of whom endorsed and financed the chapel’s restoration). This is perhaps most apparent in the
so-called “Relics” window, where well-preserved medieval panels were
eliminated, over twenty new panels created,
and numerous old panels iconographically
altered to craft a narrative devoted to the history of the Passion relics,
culminating in their acquisition by Louis IX.
The extensive alterations made to this particular window, which several
nineteenth-century scholars believed originally depicted a “History of Saint
Louis,” suggest that its restoration comprised a purposeful narrative
“retelling” focused through the perceptual filter of contemporary cultural
concerns. Unlike many medieval religious
buildings in post-revolutionary