Post your church shots

[Blue439]

Tech talk : Rib vaulting was invented during the Romanesque Age, not during the Gothic one! (2022)

Most people believe that round arches are Romanesque, and pointy (“broken”) ones are Gothic. Indeed, that is generally true, and it is one good way to differentiate the two most significant architectural styles of the Middle Ages. However, very few people know that the pointy or broken arch, which determines the technique of vaulting called “rib vaulting” (versus the Romanesque “groin vaulting”), was not invented during the Gothic Age, but during the Romanesque. Art historians still debate to determine in which church rib vaulting appeared for the first time, and the Benedictine abbey of the Holy Trinity in the French town of Lessay in Normandy is a strong contender for the title: rib vaulting was used there between 1070 and 1090, i.e., just when Romanesque was in full swing anywhere else...

I have not yet visited the abbey of Lessay but I most certainly will. In the meantime, I want to show you today two photographs illustrating the crypt under the abbey church of Saint Gilles in southern France, of which I showed yesterday a detail shot of the façade just above. That crypt is enormous: it runs under the whole width of the church, and most of its length, sports three naves like the church itself, and the main one is an impressive, low vessel built around 1130–50, which is rib-vaulted. A groin vault would not be able to withstand such geometric constraints.

This crypt is proof that the architectural experiments carried out in northern France took but a few decades to be implemented with resounding success in the southern part of the country. The Saint Gilles crypt is still there, and while it is a bit oppressing in there, with that low ceiling and the knowledge that the whole weight of the abbey church rests just above your head, the architectural prowess that has stood the test of time remains admirable.

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

 

[Needa]

Doen't the picture show both types?

 

[Blue439]

Doen't the picture show both types?

It does indeed. However, you see that the traditional barrel arches (in fact they are so low in that crypt that they could preferably be called “basket handle arches”) are only used in what are called “transverse arches”, i.e., those arches that are supported by thick pillars on the sides, so that those transverse arches can, in turn, support part of the vaulting.

Wherever the vaulting is “thrown across the void”, basically (i.e., between the side pillars), rib vaulting is used to direct the thrust towards the four corners.

In the second photo, you see the deep end of the crypt, with the altar where the bones of Saint Giles were. Rib vaulting was also used there, even though there are supporting walls on each side. Your question prompted me to wonder why, and I looked at the floor plan. There I saw that the bell tower, which was largely truncated during the French Revolution, was originally standing right above that row of the crypt. Because of the additional weight, the architects deemed it prudent to use rib vaulting here as well, to better direct the thrust from that weight. Ar least that’s what seems logical to me... but I am no architect!

 

[Blue439]

More about the Saint-Gilles abbey church (2022)

To complete the story of the Benedictine abbey church of Saint-Gilles, and in particular the discussion we had about the crypt photos I posted above, here is a panorama photograph of the eastern part of that very large church. The built-up part you see in the background is the transept. On top of the central nave (the one with a pointy arch footprint) was the bell tower I mentioned in my explanations of yesterday. You can appreciate how it was “cut down to size” by the vandals during the French Revolution.

The rest of the photo shows the ruined choir and wide ambulatory, designed to accommodate very large crowds of pilgrims. This part of the church was dismantled and sold piecemeal during and after the French Revolution, during which all religious buildings, churches, monasteries, etc., were seized by the State and sold to private owners. Some (many, to tell the truth) were protected and saved, but a number of others, including major ones like Saint-Gilles or Cluny, were used as stone quarries. Many stones from the abbey church can be spotted in the walls of 19th century homes in the town of Saint-Gilles... The quartering of this unfortunate church stopped only when it was put on the first list of French Historic Landmarks in 1840.

As usual, the PTGui stitching software I used to assemble the five-shot panorama stripped the EXIF, so this was shot with a Nikon Z7 II and a Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, on a Gitzo tripod with a Benro geared head. I shifted the lens horizontally from left to right to obtain the field of view I needed. I couldn’t step back any further, as my back was already up against the wall of what used to be the church’s apse...

 

[Robin W]

When you don't have the luxury of power tools, you learn how to do as efficiently as as possible with the tools at hand. I was into woodworking for a while and became enamored of the old hand tools. Sure, the table saw and router table is quick, but you can do almost anything with a hand saw, chisels, and hand planes that you can do with the power tools. It just takes longer, and requires some skills.

It certainly does.

 

[Blue439]

The nowhere church with the gorgeous stalls (2023)

Sometimes, my work as a pro bono photographer for the Fondation pour la Sauvegarde de l’Art Français sends me to unlikely places to make unlikely discoveries. In that foundation, I belong to the “Patrons’ Club” (Cercle des Mécènes), which singles out every year a select number of particularly deserving projects to fund. In 2022, one of those projects concerned a parish church in a small village in the remotest part of Burgundy, the mountains of Morvan.

Therefore, just after New Year’s 2023, as we were driving back home from a family reunion near Fontainebleau, we got off the freeway that snakes its way through the Morvan to détour to the 74-inhabitant village of Bard-le-Régulier.

This very strange name is easily explainable for the “Bard” part: that comes from an ancient Gaulish word meaning fortified hill or mountain, and indeed there is one dominating the village, atop which some sort of fortification probably existed before the Romans came, although no trace of it has ever been found. The le-Régulier part is more difficult to explain: this word, “regular”, implies the existence of a regulation or rule that was followed in the village... and indeed, a priory of Augustinian canons was founded here by the count of Nevers in the 1100s. So, we know where the village that grew around the priory got its name: regular canons lived there.

The church was built soon after the foundation of the priory, but construction obviously lasted well into the 1200s, with also quite a few later architectural additions. While it is quite nice, the church itself is not that remarkable. What is, though, are the 30 wooden stalls from the 1300s, sculpted with skill, devotion and humor by an unknown artist, one of the very best group of stalls in all of Burgundy.

If you wish to have a look at the project page on the website of the Fondation pour la Sauvegarde de l’Art Français, it is here: https://www.sauvegardeartfrancais.fr/projets/bard-le-regulier/.

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

 

[Blue439]

The Romanesque church that looked like a castle (2023)

Such is countryside driving nowadays: most of the time, you don’t even bother to look at a road map, you just program your destination into the GPS system and go wherever the lady in the speakers tells you to go. And thus it was that, wandering leisurely through southern Burgundy on a late January afternoon, and patiently waiting to be taken back to the A6 freeway that would lead us home, we happened upon this memorable and truly unique sight: the Romanesque church in the village of Manlay.

I have, of course, seen many fortified churches, in ruins or still standing, and I know what they were for: protection of the local populace towards the latter part of the Middle Ages, when a relatively peaceful era gave way to the countrywide Hundred Years War. However, I had never seen an édifice that looked almost entirely like a Mediæval castle, and only very secondarily like a church...! The way the scales tip here in favor of the fortification v. religion is truly remarkable.

Dedicated to Saint Laurent (Lawrence), this late Romanesque church/castle was built, as expected, in the early 1300s —the war in Burgundy began in 1337 and ended only in 1430— and its walls are 1.8 meters thick. Apparently, it served its purpose well and survived that war and the subsequent Wars of Religion in the late 16th century, only to be burned down with the rest of the village by retreating Nazi troops in July 1944.

The sad fate of the church was brought in the 1950s to German Chancellor Adenauer’s attention by the parish priest, and Adenauer organized a fundraiser that produced 200,000 deutschemarks that were used in the early 1960s to fund the substantial restoration the church needed.

On the technical side, these three shots are noteworthy because, while they were taken with my usual and trusty 19mm tilt-shift lens, they were also taken handheld, as I was too lazy pressed for time (for fear that the great light would go away) to take the tripod out of the trunk and set it up!

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

 

[Blue439]

Working on commission from the French State (2023)

In France, the Centre des Monuments Nationaux (“CMN”) is a State-run organization that manages many of the most important historic monuments. As such, it is composed mostly of civil servants, some truly knowledgeable and in love with the monument they’re administering, others with a decidedly and predominantly “administrative” (read: fussy and regulations-loving) mindset. Luckily, I had to work with the former kind when I was commissioned by the CMN (which is the armed wing of the French Ministry of Culture) to take photographs of the Romanesque cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay in Auvergne (central France). Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t cooperating and it rained most of the day.

During the Middle Ages, the cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay was a major Marian pilgrimage site, thanks to the devotion of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims for a small statue of the Virgin Mary, one of those “Black Marys” of Auvergne that made miracles. That one was supposedly brought back from the Holy Land Crusade by Saint Louis himself (i.e., French King Louis IX), and it may have come originally from Coptic Egypt, or even Ethiopia. There’s no way to tell now, as the wooden statue was burned by vandal revolutionaries in 1794. The Black Virgin one can still see in the cathedral today was made in the 19th century to replicate the genuine one, using descriptions and sketches by visitors who had the opportunity to see it before the French Revolution.

Because of this pilgrimage, it was easy for Le Puy to also become a starting point of a path to Compostela when that pilgrimage took off, and because people consequently thronged the cathedral, it had to be enlarged several times. A cloister was also built next to the nave, on the northern side, for the canons. They were secular canons, a number of them from the highest nobility, and their chapter both carried out the Opus Dei in the cathedral and served as an advisory body to the bishop. “Secular” canons means that most of them lived in the city in very comfortable, sometimes even luxurious, accommodations, and I personally believe that, given those circumstances, the construction of a cloister and other “monastery-like” buildings was more for show than anything else. A cloister is meant for solitary meditation, and I’m not sure that that cloister ever got a lot of that...

It remains a magnificent monument well worthy of a visit.

This photo was used on a magazine cover and as a large advertising poster. It was also featured on the homepage of the CMN (see here) for a couple of months.

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]

Working on commission from the French State, Part II (2023)

This is probably the most enigmatic structure of the whole cathedral compound in Le Puy-en-Velay. Used as a baptistry from the 1100s, it was the only place where Christians could receive baptism in the city until the French Revolution of 1789. However, in 1100, this building was already quite old... As some parts of the northern wall suggest, it was probably built during the early Middle Ages (400 AD? 500?) with elements re-used from the late Antiquity... unless the whole structure was from that period! Was it a baptistry then? Was it used as such before the 1100s, when the earliest recorded uses begin to appear? I have not found any documented answer to those questions, and most likely, the old stones will forever keep their secrets.

This venerable and admirable monument was protected on the very first list of Historic Landmarks in 1840, before the cathedral itself (listed in 1862 “only”). Of course, it was substantially remodeled and added to over the centuries. The first structure was probably square, as archæologists have discovered. An additional row was added to the west, with a tribune (from which this photo was taken), and a semi-circular apse with radiating chapels was built during the 1000s beyond a triumphal arch. It is said that even prior to that, a Gallo-Roman temple existed on the site, but that remains largely speculative.

Dedicated to Saint John (as most baptistries, for obvious reasons!), the baptistry is doubtlessly the oldest monument still standing on the hill where the cathedral was built. It is not normally open to the public.

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 chapel at the top (2023)

In the town of Le Puy-en-Velay (central France), the Saint Michael Chapel is perched on top of the Aiguilhe Rock, an enormous, 82–meter high geological dike made of hard basalt and left standing like a finger sticking out of the plain below by the erosion of all the sediment that once surrounded it.

There is only one way to get there: climb the hard, tall and uneven 268 steps carved out of the basalt, and in doing so, you will be following in the exact footsteps, not only of the millions of Compostela pilgrims that came here to pray over the centuries (and still do), but also of innumerable historic figures, among which the Kings of France Charles VII, Louis XI and Charles VIII, who ascended the rock to pray under the humble vaults of the chapel.

According to persistent legends, the first edifice built on top of the rock of Aiguilhe (notice how close the name is to the French word aiguille, i.e., needle) was a Roman temple dedicated to Mercury. No trace of such a sanctuary was ever found by archæologists. The chapel that one can see today was built in two successive phases. First, the initial and very small square chapel, probably with three apses but only two remain today. This was built soon after 950, either by bishop Godescalc (who had been the first French pilgrim of Compostela in 950–51), or more probably by Truannus, dean of the canons of the cathedral chapter, duly authorized by Godescalc. I have not been able to find any definitive evidence pointing to one rather than the other. What is documented, however, is that the finished chapel was consecrated by the said bishop in 961. It was a pre-Romanesque, late Carolingian monument.

Secondly, during the late 1000s, the primitive oratory was “surrounded” and augmented by a Romanesque chapel built on the flattened top of the dike. In the process, the probable third apse of the oratory was destroyed to open a way of access between the newly built “nave” and the square space of the oratory, repurposed as “choir”. The best way to understand the layout if to have a look at the floor plan drawn by architect Mallay in the 19th century, here. The imposing bell tower was also built at the same time.

The most recent part is the façade, from the late 1100s. The chapel was listed as a Historic Landmark on the very first list of 1840.

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

 

[Blue439]

The top of the chapel (2023)

This photograph shows the ceiling and upper walls in the oldest, Carolingian part of the Saint Michael chapel photographed above. It was very difficult to shoot because of the lack of space, the need to work around the existing altar which cannot be moved, and the fact that the ceiling itself hang relatively low, leaving no possibility to “step back”. At the end of the day, I had to stitch a three-exposure panorama in PTGui to cover my whole subject with minimal distortion.

The final result is quite faithful to what I have seen on-site, and hopefully does justice to those wonderful alfresco paintings from the 950–60s...

Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor 19mm , ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Panoirama shot made up of three exposures stitched with PTGui software. Natural light.

 

[Blue439]

The abbey of Saint-Pierre de Champagne (2023)

Dedicated to Saint Peter, the abbey church of Champagne is not located, as one would think, in the bubbly-producing hills of northeastern France, but much further south, on the banks of River Rhône, between Lyon and Valence, in the old province of Vivarais.

Stylistically, this large church, standing right next to the busy and noisy thoroughfare that Highway 86 is today, is very homogeneous and was built around 1150, replacing an older, 11th century church of which two capitals have been re-used in the nave. Numerous sculpted fragments from the previous church were also gathered as demolition progressed and reinserted haphazardly in the new one. But built by whom exactly, and for what exact purpose? That is much more mysterious.

From the scant written evidence that has come to us, we can surmise that it was originally built by the Albon family of powerful local lords, probably for regular canons of one or the other obedience. In 1275, it had become a priory of the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Chef. In 1172, the canons of the chapter of the Saint Maurice Cathedral in Vienne had given a number of churches to the abbey of Saint-Chef, but the charter doesn’t specify which ones. If we are right in thinking that the Champagne church was originally owned by canons, it is possible that those canons were the ones from the Vienne chapter, and if so, the Champagne church may have been among those turned over to the abbey in 1172. Furthermore, it has been noted (in particular in my Zodiaque collection reference book, Vivarais et Gévaudan romans, by Robert Saint-Jean) that the Champagne church offers many similarities with the abbey church of Saint-Chef, in a more accomplished version, as the former came half a century after the latter.

The link between Saint-Chef and Champagne, however, did not last. Because of deep and enduring management problems at Saint-Chef where the monks could not elect a new abbot, the archbishop of Vienne was first appointed as abbot ad perpetuitam by a papal Bull of John XXII in 1320. A second Bull, in 1328, took away from the abbey the Saint Peter Priory, under the pretext that its income was not sufficient to support the prior and his monks. The church then became a simple parish church. However, let’s not forget that, at the time, the Rhône River was the border between the kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire: the archbishop of Vienne had his seat on the left bank, on the Empire side, while the Saint Peter Priory was on the right bank, on the kingdom side; the archbishop may have wanted to be able to take refuge in France in the event things went sour on the Empire side... which would explain why the priory compound was indeed fortified at the same time!

Seriously damaged during the Wars of Religion in the 1560s, the church undertook important repairs during the early 1600s: it is then the the three cupolas on squinches roofing the nave were put in place in lieu of the previous Romanesque barrel vault. The church, much too big for such a small village, continued to degrade over the decades. By 1750, the upper floors of the tower-porch that framed the western entrance were in ruin, and one century later, what was left of that tower-porch was razed to allow for the enlargement of what was then the royal road number 86. This veritable act of vandalism prompted the authorities to protect the monument in 1854 by listing it as a Historic Landmark.

A systematic restoration took place between 1888 and 1894, during which (it is a rare enough occurrence to be duly noted and lauded!) all the add-ons erected after the end of the Romanesque period were eliminated. The original church was saved. In 1968, three regular Augustinian canons from a Swiss convent came and settled in Champagne, reviving the Saint Victor offshoot of the Augustinians which had been dead since the French Revolution. They proved extremely successful and in 1976, Pope Paul VI elevated the priory to abbey status. Today, the church is both canonical and parochial.

However, the very exceptional characteristic of this abbey is that, because the original monastery buildings had been destroyed after the French Revolution and replaced by ordinary village houses, the Augustinians had to build anew where there was space available, i.e., a couple hundred meters away from the church...! Thus, there is no proper enclosure, the canons live in the middle of the village, and walk across it to go attend to their duties. This is much too in sæculum for my taste, and not a proper way to practice the life of a so-called “regular” canon. I understand the appeal that the church may have had, but my opinion is that, owing to the present-day configuration of the village, it should have been deemed unsuitable. Likewise, the liturgy of this congregation does not truly meet with my approval, the same way “reality TV” doesn’t: a floor-heated church, cleverly designed lighting everywhere, a discreet and elaborate sound system... quite a bit too Hollywoodian for me. But obviously, just like reality TV, it does have its appeal.

The photo below shows the whole length of the nave, seen from the part of the tribune that runs along the inner façade of the church. On each side, you can see the openings that give some light into the nave, and in front a similar twin-arched opening in the diaphragm arch shows a glimpse of the wall above the triumphal arch, if you look carefully.

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

 

[Blue439]

The Benedictine priory church of Notre-Dame de Veyrines (2023)

Nested very far away from the touristic thoroughfares, in a hamlet of half a dozen houses in the middle of nowhere in the mountainous part (660 meters of altitude) of the Ardèche region (southeastern France), the former Benedictine priory church of Veyrines, dedicated to Saint Mary, is one of those historical and architectural jewels that I so love to discover.

In the Middle Ages, paradoxically, the isolation of the locale was less: mule tracks coming from the towns of Tournon and Annonay down in the plains, and going to Le Puy and the Massif Central mountains, snaked through here. Veyrines was the perfect stopover between the Rhône Valley and the Velay mountains, and benefited from quite some human and merchandise traffic. A subsidiary of the abbey of Saint-Chaffre, the priory of Veyrines was protected by the Pagan family of local lords (yes, that was indeed their family name!), whose ancestor Aymon originally (i.e., during the late 1000s) donated a first church and the land around it to Saint-Chaffre to build a priory. The priory apparently went through the Hundred Years War unscathed, but suffered during the Wars of Religion and the nave had to be at least partly rebuilt in the 17th century, obviously (from what I have seen) using a lot of the remaining Mediæval stones that must have been scattered and left lying around. Robert Saint-Jean, in his Zodiaque book Vivarais et Gévaudan romans, hesitates to say whether those walls were actually rebuilt or not, and to which extent, as the stonework really looks identical to the Romanesque one. Modern scientific methods of dating would have to be used on the mortar to know for sure.

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 Benedictine priory church of Notre-Dame de Veyrines (2023)

The archaic, not very well made but very touching octagonal cupola on squinches in Veyrines.

Does anyone know how to call such a photograph? Anti-zenithal? Contra-zenithal? Nadiral?

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 smallest church I have seen (2017)

This chapel, dedicated to Notre-Dame de la Paix (Our Lady of the Peace), stands near the village of Cherveix in the Dordogne region (southwestern France). It is not old at all, having been built further to a wish in 1879, but it is certainly the smallest free-standing chapel I have ever seen: barely five meters by three.

Nikon D810, Nikkor 35mm, ƒ/1.4 G lens, handheld.

 

[Blue439]

The Romanesque church and its keep (2023)

The Saint-Restitut parish church in the eponymous village (southeastern France) is unique for a Romanesque church, as its nave is attached at its western end to a square, tall and massive Mediæval defense tower... but let’s begin with the dedication and this bizarre “Restitut” saint.

Restitut is, in fact, the blind-born Sidoine (Sidney in English, I assume?) mentioned in the Gospel, who was miraculously healed by Christ. In memory of the recovery of his eyesight, he changed his name to Restitut: Restitutus est ei visus, as the Gospel says in Latin, i.e., “Eyesight is given back to him”. After the death of Christ, Restitut traveled with the members of the Bethany family cast away from the Holy Land on a small boat without sail or oar, which came to shore at the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in southern France. The small group of disciples, which included Mary Magdalene, dispersed and Restitut headed North along the Rhône River to settle and preach in the region which we call today the Drôme Provençale, and more specifically in the low mountains of the Tricastin. Even though, towards the end of his life, Restitut went to Italy where he eventually died, his remains were brought back here.

Strangely and unusually enough, the square tower (which is very old: it was most likely built during the first half of the 11th century) was used as a repository for Restitut’s relics. It may even have been built for that very purpose, when such relics were repatriated from Italy. The fact is that, because of the relics, the village and the church became a noted place of pilgrimage radiating beyond the borders of Provence and the Rhône Valley during all of the Middle Ages. The relics were burned and dispersed by the Protestants during the Wars of Religion in the late 16th century.

In order to allow the pilgrims to come close to the relics which were kept at the lower level of the square tower, an opening was made into its eastern wall and the church nave, built during the 1100s, was thus attached to it. The entrance into the church was located on the southern side, where the village square was spacious enough for pilgrim circulation.

This photograph of the whole southern side of the church. The square tower on the left could have had some defensive/watch function beyond keeping the saint’s relics —arrow slits can be seen here and there.

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

 

[Blue439]

About to collapse (2015)

The city of Matera in Basilicata may have rehabilitated its sassi, however there are some other buildings in town that require urgent care, such as this church (I’d say from the late 16th century) that looked (in 2015) like it was about to collapse... What has happened to it since then? I do not know. This is typical of Italy: they have way too much heritage everywhere, and alas! not enough money to take care of it properly...

Nikon D810, Nikkor 24mm, ƒ/1.4 G lens, handheld.

 

[billpics]

These are four separate portal statues (lifesize) on the front entrance of the Basilica Saint Clotilde in Paris, France... near the Musée d'Orsay. I photographed them individually and then after PS adjustments, made a photo composite. It's a nice church in a quiet setting and doesn't receive much attention from tourists. There is a lovely restaurant on the corner with seating outside to view the park and church.

From left to right... Saint Remy, Sainte Clotilde, Clovis I, Saint Maur.
*The front entrance pic is from Wikipedia, for reference.

D500
40mm DX 2.8 micro

 

[Blue439]

These are four separate portal statues (lifesize) on the front entrance of the Basilica Saint Clotilde in Paris, France... near the Musée d'Orsay. I photographed them individually and then after PS adjustments, made a photo composite. It's a nice church in a quiet setting and doesn't receive much attention from tourists. There is a lovely restaurant on the corner with seating outside to view the park and church.

From left to right... Saint Remy, Sainte Clotilde, Clovis I, Saint Maur.
*The front entrance pic is from Wikipedia, for reference.

D500
40mm DX 2.8 micro

Very nice set! I would have just corrected the converging verticals on the façade shot.

I know that church quite well. With that of the Invalides (where one would marry the general’s daughter ), it is the poshest parish in all of Paris. Old money.

 

[Blue439]

The Most Amazing Columns (2023)

Three photos today, as they belong together.

The Saint-Restitut church already pictured above features sculpture of an extremely high level of technical mastery and creative artistry...

... but the most amazing feature is the columns that have been shaped in a manner so... well, “modern” (!) as I have never seen elsewhere! It is astounding how an artist of the 1100s could have had such a daring and utterly conceptual mind... And to think that we will never know who he was, nor what he was called...

Nikon Z7 II, Micro-Nikkor 85mm, ƒ/2.8 D ED tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter for the first two photos. Nikkor Z 100-400mm, ƒ/4.5–5.6 S lens for the last one. Gitzo tripod and Benro geared head for all.