A European walk through Bordeaux 19
The Gesù of Bordeaux.
Eglise Notre-Dame -
1 Rue Mably.
Oskar Kokoschka (1886 -1980), L'ÉGLISE NOTRE-DAME (1925) , Musée des Beaux-arts de Bordeaux
Built in a
baroque style in the late 17th century,
work on the construction of the church
of the Jacobins, or Saint Dominic (which became “Notre Dame” under the Concordat), began from 1684 on land that the
Jacobins had recently acquired. Wanting to use the
Church of the Gesù in Rome as a source of
inspiration, both externally
and internally, it was considered to mark the apogee of baroque religious art
in Bordeaux. To avoid competition
with the récollet convent, then
contiguous, the Dominicans had to undertake to open the
building to the east, which
was not the usual
orientation of a church. The construction was completed in
1707, which is the date inscribed on the keystone of the edifice. The exterior seems closer to the Sicilian baroque style of the churches
of Noto, rebuilt in the same period as Vignola’ works, completed or reworked by Giacomo della Porta, for the Roman Gesù,
a century earlier.
Once the church had been built, an organ was transported
from the former chapel of
the Dominicans, built by
the English organ builder
Jehan Haon (or Hew), active in France in the 17th and
early 18th centuries. It is
this English organ that rang out, on Sunday 22 June 1777, for Emperor Joseph II
of Austria during his stay in Bordeaux. Although the chapter of
Saint-Seurin had offered to
say Mass at a time that suited him, he
declined the invitation and said
“that he would go to hear it at the first church he came across, and was at the Jacobins’ shortly afterwards...” After this, the organ was replaced by one commissioned from the German builder Godefroy Schmidt in 1785.
Fifty years later, on 17 April 1828 at
10 a.m.,
it was a German organ that
echoed under the vault to celebrate Goya’s funeral. The celebration, however, was entirely Spanish.
All the Spaniards of Bordeaux had
gathered at the church to pay their final respects to their immortal painter. All the Spanish refugees, all the artists of
Bordeaux attended Notre Dame, enclosed
in their grief behind the gates of the master ironsmith
Moreau, who had worked in the cathedral of
Madrid. Pio de Molina, Bernardino Amati, Braulio Poc and Antonio de Brugada were the pallbearers, while Gumersinda Goicoechea and Mariano
led the funeral procession from Place du Chapelet to the Chartreuse.
When, in spring 1925, the Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) came to Bordeaux, this conscious or unconscious baroque heir painted just two
monuments. One is, as we
know, the (inverted) perspective of the Grand Théâtre
and of Cours du Chapeau Rouge. But it is the other that
this precursor of Viennese expressionism – whose works are not without cause displayed in the Upper Belvedere, the temple of Austrian baroque art – completed the
fastest: the Church of Notre Dame, which the emperor of Austria preferred, no doubt for reasons of proximity, one hundred and fifty years earlier
to the solemnities of Saint-Seurin… …
… …
… …
L'église Notre Dame de Bordeaux.
L'église San Nicolo à Noto (Sicile)
and take Rue Mautrec
situated opposite,
then cross Allées de Tourny and walk
to number 37.
© Bertrand Favreau
and Tyché Editions 2014
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