A European walk through Bordeaux 9
The Cardinal of Manzù.
Cathédrâle
Saint-André.
A European walk through Bordeaux 9
The Cardinal of Manzù.
Cathédrâle
Saint-André.
The
bronze bas-relief overlooks the tomb
of Paul Marie Alexandre Richaud (1887-1968), archbishop of Bordeaux in 1950
and cardinal in 1958. Against
the wall at the base of the tomb,
dug into the ground, a black marble plaque bears the epitaph of the cardinal and his coat of arms.
Hommage
au cardinal Richaud [tribute to Cardinal Richaud] is the work of the bergamask sculptor Giacomo Manzoni (Bergamo,
22 December 1908-Rome, 17 January
1991), also known as Manzù (Manzoni is Manzù in Bergamo dialect). His signature appears on the relief, in the bottom
left.
Self-taught but a professor of
sculpture throughout his
life, Catholic but close to communism
(he was awarded
the Lenin Peace Prize in 1965), Manzù began a series
of bas-reliefs in bronze in 1939 on the theme of the crucifixion and the deposition
where the executioners wear
German helmets, which were exhibited
in Rome in 1942. He attracted
criticism from both the fascist government and the ecclesiastical
authorities.
Manzù’s public,
monumental and “civil” sculptural work is well-known, notably the Monument to the Partisan in Italy,
in his native city of Bergamo,
created in 1977. But also his great
sculpture, Peace and Justice, created
for the Court of Justice of the European Union in
Luxembourg in the seventies and, in 1989, his last monumental sculpture, Hymn
to Life, which stands 6 metres
high opposite the United Nations building in New York.
Yet, from
the outset, it is around religion that he expressed
his originality best. Manzù offers a
contemporary version of the inspiration of Ghiberti
for the bronze doors, and of Bernini,
who was himself
a cardinals’ sculptor in another century. Having won a contest, he worked from
1952 to 1964 to create the Gate
of Death for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which he dedicated to Pope John XXIII. In 1955, he created
the central gate of the cathedral
of Salzburg, the city where he
lived until 1960, and which exhibited his Great Cardinal.
It is a feeling experienced during a visit to St. Peter’s in Rome in 1934, at the sight of the Pope surrounded by two seated cardinals,
that determined this recurrent creative process. Two years later,
he created his first “cardinal,” but it was a failure
and doomed to destruction. Manzù
then had to wait until the summer of 1938 to create his first sculpture of a cardinal standing 65 cm high. And so began his
long series of “cardinals”,
monumental bronze sculptures, hieratic simplified images, pyramidal working
drawings of figures wrapped
in the conical powerful
mass of their cappa magna. The cardinal he exhibited in
1948 won him a Grand Prize
at the 24th Biennale di Venezia. By 1959, he had already
sculpted more than fifty cardinals, sitting, walking, from small to life-size. Today, no one knows exactly quite how many there were.
Sitting, standing or praying,
but invariably represented absorbed in meditation, his cardinals can
be found in all the major museums of sculpture in the world.
For
Bordeaux, the Hommage au cardinal Richaud stele was of a more modest design, but in it are combined both Manzù’s
cathedral door bas-relief
expertise (seen in the Vatican, in Salzburg, in
Rotterdam, in Orvieto, etc.) and the clean lines common to his more monumental works. He has also depicted the face of Cardinal Richaud,
stylised but easily recognisable. The Cardinal of Bordeaux does
not belong to Manzù’s anonymous series and hence remains – along with the sculpture of
Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro, completed
in 1953 – one of the few … ….
Epitaphe
(gravée, au sol) : Paulus / S. R. E. card. Richaud / 1887-1968. Epitaphe (sur
la plaque de marbre) : Ici repose / le cardinal Paul Richaud / 1887-1968 / né à
Versailles prêtre en 1913 / évêque auxiliaire en 1934 / évêque de Laval en 1938
/ archevêque de Bordeaux en 1950 / pasteur et docteur / il maintint et fit
grandir / son église dans la foi / en communion avec / le siège apostolique /
il fut un grand apôtre / de la justice sociale / de la charité et de la paix /
le 5 février 1968 / il répondit avec confiance / à l' appel du seigneur / qu'
il savait proche. Armoiries du cardinal Richaud (au-dessus de l' épitaphe) :
[de gueules] à quatre chaînes d' or en sautoir entretenues au coeur par un
anneau de même, au chef d' azur chargé d' une étoile d' or accostée de 2 fleurs
de lys de même ; devise : Vinctus Christi (Eph. III, 1). Numéro d' inventaire
(sur le relief) : BX. 1972 11. 2. 2009/05/20
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Leave the
cathedral by the north gate, facing Rue Vital-Carles.
© Bertrand Favreau
and Tyché Editions 2014
The Intellectual
Property Code prohibits copies or reproductions intended for collective use.
Representation or reproduction in whole or in part by any means whatsoever,
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