Cathedrals I

Serie: Large Format Artworks

Technique: Latex on canvas

Size: 190 x 290 cm

Year: 2003

Interior of the Cathedral of Chartres and "The Cathedral" (sculpture by Auguste Rodin)

Our Lady of Chartres, a 12th-century Gothic building, was built immediately after the fire that ravaged the 11th-century Romanesque cathedral.

Esta catedral se encuentra en la ciudad de Chartres, en el centro oeste de Francia.

The interior is beautiful, especially when the day is bright. When advancing through the central nave one experiences an immense enjoyment of beauty, and as one approaches the transept, one feels how the measures of the temple and the games of perspectives evolve. This image of ascension in aesthetic and spiritual enjoyment is enhanced by the unevenness of the ground itself, increasing in altitude up to the head. This cathedral, like many others, was drawn by Auguste Rodin in his travel notebooks.

In 1914 his book "Cathedrals of France" was published with almost 2000 illustrations by this great artist.

Auguste Rodin (Paris 1840-1917), made the sculpture in stone that he called "The Cathedral" evoking the warheads of a Gothic cathedral.

They are two right hands that do not belong to the same person. One of them is more vigorous, taller and stronger and is in a protective attitude; it is male. The other hand, more tender and collected, more delicate, is feminine.

The gesture is one of affective closeness, interpersonal communion, prayer, and they are at a higher level.

These hands rest one against the other, slightly curved and united in the center of the kind of vault that they form at the top, where the fingers evoke the ribs of the arches, pointing towards a higher center of confluence.

It is the architectural principle of the Gothic cathedral: the building supporting itself by the mutual support of the parties, which rise together, like the hands of "The Cathedral".

"The construction is rising compactly, to form a temple ... where you go with the others entering that construction to form by the spirit a dwelling place for God" (Eph. 2: 21-22).