Post Your Black and Whites Photos!!

[Blue439]

Mediæval sculpture like it was done yesterday!

We are in the Romanesque abbey church of Souillac, southwestern France, and the inside of the western façade is amazing. Inside? Yes, and no one knows for sure why. Was that sculpture always meant to be there and beheld by the faithful as they exited the church? Was it, which is more likely, intended for some outside use that did not happen and was it then placed inside the church for protection and “temporary storage”?

Regardless, the fact that it was always kept inside results in a unique example of almost undamaged sculpture, and what a sculpture that is indeed...! The tympanum shown in this photograph is relatively small, implying it was destined for a side portal. Contrary to most churches where the themes selected for tympani come from the Apocalypse, the one used here shows a much less known episode: that of deacon Theophilus who, disappointed because his bishop did not grant him the post of treasurer of a church, sold his soul to the Devil, later repented and was pardoned by the Virgin Mary who redeemed him.

At the bottom left, we see Satan and Theophilus sealing the parchment, and on the right Satan holding Theophilus’s hands as a symbol of “ownership”. Above, Theophilus in a dream sees, on the left, an angel bringing back the parchment, and on the right the Virgin, accompanied by two angels, “re-inserting” the parchment, which symbolizes the soul, into Theophilus’s head. On the right side stands Saint Peter with his keys, and on the left Saint Benedict with his abbot’s crozier.

The intricacy of the sculpture and the depth of the relief are truly amazing, especially when you think of the rather crude tools that were available in the early 1100s!

Nikon Z7 II, Sigma 135mm, ƒ/1.8 Art lens. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light.

 

[Peter7100]

 

[Blue439]

The cupolas on the roof of the abbey church of Souillac, southwestern France.

Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light, single exposure.

 

[Blue439]

Today I am happy to show you (albeit in too small a size to enjoy all the details) the second Absolute Masterpiece of Romanesque Sculpture, the first one being the Reclining Eve I have already shown: the Dance of Prophet Isaiah.

Because words fail me to describe this piece, I will quote those of Jacques Loubatière, renowned specialist of Romanesque art: “The gaze of Prophet Isaiah invites the faithful to the exhilaration of soul and body of one who has met his Creator and bears witness to it with prophetic intoxication.”

“Outstanding”, or the “awesome” so liked by today’s mediocrity all over social media, do not even begin to describe this work. The sculpture is life-size, and this is a three-exposure vertical panorama.

Nikon Z7 II, Sigma 135mm, ƒ/1.8 Art lens, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Three-exposure panorama stitched with PTGui software, natural light.

 

[Blue439]

The wrong cloth in the right church (2022)

The small town of Souillac lies in the French département (bit like a county for you guys in the US) of Lot, in the old province of Quercy (and in the modern region of Occitania). According to unconfirmed local stories, the abbey of Souillac was founded by Saint Éloi († 660) before it was taken over by the Benedictines from Aurillac in the 900s. From that period, only the Western tower-porch remains. The abbey was listed as a Historic Landmark on the first list of 1840.

The choir cross is draped with a piece of cloth probably meant to symbolize the sole clothing that Christ wore around His groin on the Cross. And of course, modern-day Church, still very much inspired by false ideas of splendor and the tearful Saint-Sulpicien imagery of the 19th century, makes the mistake of selecting a rich and shiny silk cloth that clearly shows off how much it cost, instead of the basic piece of linen or cotton that would have been much more appropriate...

Remember, in Indiana Jones’s The Last Crusade, how the bad guy mistakes a gold cup ornate with many polished gems for the true Cup of the Last Supper, which is in fact a poor, ordinary clay bowl? This is what this piece of silk hanging there reminds me of. Well, all right, Hollywood being Hollywood, the poorish clay bowl in that movie had to be coated inside with something that looked suspiciously like gold (probably looked better on camera), where in truth it was most likely nothing of the sort...

(And by the way, if you like Holy Grail stories, the best one I have ever read is Quest by Richard Ben Sapir, published in 1987. Ben Sapir († 1987) is also the author of The Body, which became an awfully bad movie with Banderas, while Quest was regrettably –and unexplainably– never adapted for the big screen.)

Nikon Z7 II, Sigma 135mm, ƒ/1.8 Art lens, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light.

 

[Blue439]

[Sorry for the long historical caption, I hope some of you will find it of interest.]

The sarcophagus of a saint

We are in the city of Poitiers, capital of the old province of Poitou in western central France.

In this area of the city, a first church was built in the 500s by Radegonde, Queen of the Franks. It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was renamed in honor of Radegonde herself in 587 after she was sanctified. She had been interred within, and after her sanctification, her remains were, as was the custom, exhumed and moved to a stone sarcophagus, which is the one you can still see today. Imagine how old that thing is: made in Year 587! The sarcophagus was placed in the crypt underneath the choir with those of two other saints (see below). Then, in 1012, her sarcophagus was moved and placed in a recessed space called a “confession” (Lat. confessio), slightly below the elevated choir, but still more easily accessible.

Why? Because between 587 and 1012, Saint Radegonde had made quite a name for herself in terms of performing miracles for the faithful who came to pray by her side and touch her sarcophagus; and those faithful grew ever more numerous, so that Abbess Béliarde, who ruled the women’s abbey under the ægis of which the Saint Radegonde church was then placed, had to find a way for the sacred bones to be more easily accessible to those crowds. Hence the creation of the confessio, which is but a few steps down from the church nave floor level.

As an aside, note that the church also served as a “funerary basilica” (read: burial place) for the nuns of the aforementioned Holy Cross Abbey, indeed the first abbey for women ever created in Gaul, founded by the same Radegonde and headed by Béliarde around Year 1000.

During the early Middle Ages, churches and other buildings often perished by fire: candles and oil lamps were the only way to light buildings that were often quite dark, therefore a number of them were needed —and of course, the opus Dei went on after sunset and before sunrise, and candles were needed for that, too. So, at any time, a number of open flame devices were live, and there were many items of wood and cloth inside. Also, most churches were then timber-roofed... You can imagine the rest: accidents happened often. The Saint Radegonde church fell victim to such a fire and was rebuilt in the late 1000s, having been consecrated in 1099. It was then a collegiate church, the prior being appointed by the abbess of Holy Cross Abbey. In those times, it was not unusual to have a woman rule over a group of men; indeed, the early monasteries founded under the Rule of Saint Colomban were often dual, with two separate communities of men and women sharing the same enclosure and the abbess having the final say over the abbot. And of course, nuns still needed men for daily liturgy, as women could not be ordained and only priests and deacons could perform Mass, hear confessions and administer sacraments.

From that old Romanesque church consecrated in 1099, the lower part of the bell tower, as well as the whole eastern end (choir and apse) have survived. The nave is 13th century Romanesque, and was re-vaulted in Gothic style in the 1300s.

The photo shows the genuine 6th century sarcophagus where Saint Radegonde was buried after she was “elevated” (such is the word) from her earthly grave. It is still venerated to this day by pilgrims, even though it is now empty of bones, having been desecrated (like many others) by mindless vandals during the French Revolution of 1789. While it was in the crypt between 587 and 1012, the sarcophagus was next to those of two other female saints, Agnes (also abbess of the Holy Cross Abbey) and Disciole. The latter two are still down there and still the subject of devotion to this day, I have watched it myself.

The splendid stone table, lusciously sculpted with archaic and rebellious-looking Pagan motifs, is from the 11th century. My guess is that it was placed under the sarcophagus by Béliarde when she had it relocated to the confessio. The three supporting piles underneath are from the 15th century.

The short columns on the perimeter have been remodeled in the 19th century and look quite recent indeed.

There is precious little light in the confessio and I had to pose for 20 seconds (plus another 20 for the noise reduction job) to get this image shot at ƒ/11. Focusing the lens took some time as well!

Nikon Z7 II, Micro-Nikkor 45mm, ƒ/2.8 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light, single exposure.

 

[Blue439]

The choir and the apse with its ambulatory for the orderly circulation of pilgrims, still in the Sainte-Radegonde church in Poitiers. I mentioned above the gory and garish “supposedly Mediæval-looking” coating applied in the 19th century, and, well, it looks rather better in black-and-white!

The massive round columns and the enormous capitals are a chief characteristic of this church, which is fascinating to visit.

Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light.

 

[Blue439]

Saint-Gabriel, a Roman-inspired Romanesque wonder (2022)

What could be humbler than a humble Romanesque chapel sitting in isolation in the middle of the countryside, a few kilometers away from the town of Tarascon (southern France)? Except that this wonder of Provençal Romanesque art that blends Mediæval with Roman is not so humble after all...! And why does it sit here, all alone?

To find the solution to this mystery, you need to go back to Roman times, and that is made easier by the presence of a Roman funerary headstone bearing a dedication to the memory of a “Master Mariner”, which reminds us that, during the Antiquity, this place was an important crossroads of the Via Domitia and the Via Heracleia. There, a marshy area made it mandatory for travelers and goods to be carried over to the other side by mariners navigating on rafts supported by inflated goatskins. Thus, during the Antiquity, there was a whole village here, thriving on passenger and goods traffic over the marshes, a small community that was still rich enough to commission a master architect and expert stone cutters and sculptors to build their church around 1150.

If archæological digs around the church have revealed the nature and extent of that village, no one really knows what manner of building (or successive buildings) pre-existed on this site before the chapel we see today. Tradition speaks of a Saint Philip chapel built in the 500s (Merovingian) or the 800s (Carolingian), but no conclusive evidence has been found to date. The progressive draining of the marshes over the centuries made the mariners’ community obsolete and the village was progressively deserted by its inhabitants, leaving the church standing alone among the olive trees... giving it a whiff of an Indiana Jones-ey atmosphere!

Many elements in the façade show an admiration for, and a desire to pay homage to, the way Romans built and decorated their monuments, which is not at all unusual in that part of France, not so far from modern–day Italy, that was well and truly “romanized” for several centuries.

Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light.

 

[Blue439]

The priory of Serrabone, a largely ignored jewel of Mediæval art (2023)

Today we are in the Pyrénées mountains that make a natural border between France and Spain, for a brief glimpse at a truly unique place, the so-called “priory” of Serrabone, which features an absolute world-class masterpiece of Romanesque sculpture: its tribune.

I say “so-called” because a priory, in the genuine meaning of the word, is a “subsidiary” monastery established by an abbey. It is populated by monks sent by that abbey. Those monks are led by a prior, whose superior is the abbot of the founding abbey. In the case of Serrabone, there was none of that. At the beginning, there was a late Carolingian parochial church established in this mountainous locale and first mentioned in writing in 1069. The walls of the nave are, for some part, still those of that ancient church.

It was then, at a time when local lords used to meddle more and more in the affairs of the Church (which was one of the reasons that prompted the coming of the Gregorian reform), that the viscount of Cerdagne and the local lord of Corsavy installed on the Serrabone mountaintop an unusually mixed group of canons and canonesses to live in accordance with the Augustinian Rule. A new college church was built (mostly by enlarging the previous one) and consecrated in 1151.

Its architecture is harmonious but very simple, as one would expect: in the Middle Ages, those mountains were populated (hence the creation of the parish) and did feed their inhabitants (serra bona in the local Catalan language means “good mountain”), but there was precious little commerce with the outside world and the locals had nothing of real value to export. Therefore, the local economy was pretty much a closed circuit and money was far from flowing in abundantly. The style of the church, even though there were donations from the aforementioned lords, reflects this paucity of financial resources.

It is therefore a total mystery how the magnificently sculpted tribune, which would have cost a veritable fortune, was funded, and by whom. Nothing has ever been demonstrated in that matter, although many have conjectured in various directions. The only certainty we have is that it was built around the time when the church itself was completed, i.e., the mid–1150s.

The culmination of the “priory” did not last very long: canons and canonesses are not monks and nuns, their commitment is found throughout History and places to be much less strong, and by the late 1200s they had already broken communal life and begun to live in their own separate homes. Decadence went to such extremes that the “priory” was secularized by the pope in the 16th century and made a dependency of the chapter of the cathedral of Solsona. The last “prior” died in 1612 and the church returned to its simple parochial status.

The place was progressively abandoned as people left the mountains to go live easier lives in the valleys. It was almost in ruins when it was listed as a Historic Landmark in 1875 and the restoration began. Fortunately, the tribune had been protected and its capitals and columns hidden by the locals.

Nikon Z7 II, Micro-Nikkor 85mm, ƒ/2.8 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light, single exposure.

 

[Blue439]

One of many striking (I think!) examples of sculpture to be found on the tribune at Serrabone.

Nikon Z7 II, Micro-Nikkor 45mm, ƒ/2.8 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light, single exposure.

I don’t have a black-and-white shot showing the whole tribune, only closeups, but I still wanted you to be able to see what it looks like from a few steps back, apologies for sneaking this color photo in... The tribune is all marble: imagine the cost!

Same technical info as above, except the lens is the 19mm ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift.

 

[Woodyg3]

 

[Blue439]

The Benedictine abbey church of Souillac (southwestern France, June 2022)

The transept shot from the gallery. As there are two symmetrical galleries, you can see the other one across the nave, and on the right the small, dark and narrow passage through the stone arch. I had to go through that to reach the transept part from which I took the photo I uploaded a couple of days ago. Not easy to negotiate at the best of times, so you can imagine with the tripod, photo backpack and fragile camera with large, protruding lens in hand...

Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light.

 

[Blue439]

The crypt under the abbey church of Saint Giles, southern France (2022)

In the small town of Saint-Gilles in Camargue, a monastery was erected in the 600s. Initially dedicated to the saints Peter and Paul, its dedication was changed during the 800s to Gilles (the English-language Giles), a local hermit whose remains were kept in the abbey church. Thus it became a very important place of pilgrimage on the Via Tolosana, one of the major paths to Compostela beginning in Arles, a mere 33 kilometers from Saint-Gilles... and thus it is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1998.

In fact, the reputation of Saint Giles and the miracles he (or rather his holy remains) accomplished was such that it was the third most frequented place of pilgrimage in the whole Western world, just after Rome and Compostela itself. The crowds were so enormous and so diverse that the town numbered 134 money changers, where a major city or port in Europe would rarely have more than thirty...

The town of Saint-Gilles also was, in the Middle Ages, the end of the famous Mediæval Path of Régordane, a section of the way that lead through the wild Auvergne and Cévennes mountains from the Île-de-France (the Paris area) to the Languedoc, the Mediterranean Sea and Spain.

The abbey was affiliated with Cluny from 1132 and technically became a priory, but its importance and reputation were such that it was never truly treated as such, even though it enjoyed the protection of the Burgundian arch-monastery.

The abbey church we see today was built from 1130 on top of the previous one, which became the crypt where the saint’s body was exposed. Its façade is particularly renowned as a “book of stone” depicting many scenes of the Scriptures, with a wide variety of artistic sources of inspiration: the Antiquity, the Eastern world and the Romanesque.

That crypt is very long and wide and a little bit scary to enter with its very low vaulted ceilings that seem just about ready to collapse under the enormous weight of the church above... The tomb of Saint Giles is in the back.

... and here is what’s above it: very heavy indeed!

Both photos: Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.

 

[Blue439]

A smiling angel (2022)

As we are on the abbey church of Saint Giles in the south of France, I thought I would show you a couple of photographs of the vaunted sculpture on the façade. Now, smiling angels are few and far between, but by no means unknown in the amazingly diverse world of Romanesque sculpture. They have even spilled over to the Gothic Age, one good example of this is the very well known Smiling Angel of the Reims Cathedral (that’s Champagne country!).

Back to our façade, the parts where faces were not hacked away by Protestants show shockingly natural and lifelike examples of statuary. This is an amazing Saint Michael using a spear to slay the Dragon. His half-smiling face and effortless attitude I find absolutely stunning, given the difficulty of the task he is accomplishing...

Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor Z 100-400mm, ƒ/4.5–5.6 VR S lens. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light.

 

[Blue439]

Another archangel at work... (2022)

Even more surprising: the façade of the abbey church of Saint Giles has yet another sculpted representation of Saint Michael! Here he is, surrounded by onlookers (human or angelic?), and still smiling as he effortlessly slays the Dragon... or maybe some other demonic beast, as this one seems to be half-human (see the foot). Anyway, this is Michael doing what he does best: slaying monsters from Hell.

Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor Z 100-400mm, ƒ/4.5–5.6 VR S lens. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light.

 

[Woodyg3]

 

[wev]

 

[Blue439]

I have family in the Normandy city of Le Havre. This was taken when we went to visit in December 2022, from the balcony of our hotel room overlooking the English Channel. The dim coastline in the background is also Normandy, on the other side of the Seine estuary.

Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor Z 24-120mm, ƒ/4 S lens, handheld.

 

[Blue439]

A landscape in black-and-white. Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, FTZ II adapter, handheld.

 

[Blue439]

Anzy-le-Duc in Burgundy (2022)

There was already a monastery in the village of Anzy-le-Duc during Carolingian times (i.e., around Year 800). In 878, that monastery became a priory of the Saint Martin Abbey in the city of Autun, then the little out-of-the-way priory became famous under one of its first priors, Hugues of Poitiers, who had held the title of Duke (hence the name of the village) before he renounced the secular world. Hugues died in Anzy in odor of sanctity around 930 and miracles began to happen around his sepulture, drawing ever larger crowds of pilgrims.

Thus, a new, enlarged church had to be built during the late 1000s, and that is the one we can still admire today. Its western façade features a beautifully ornate gate with a gorgeous tympanum and, more unusually for the early date, a very wide and tall window through which lots of light come into the nave.

Hugues is still buried in the crypt below the church, and that place is strangely heavy with atmosphere. I recommend the visit.

Nikon Z7, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.