Museum of Cluny in Paris crucifix. Don't be fooled

The Cluny Museum, also known as the National Museum of Medieval Art in Paris, has one of the most beautiful collections in Europe dedicated to the art, daily life, social and religious history of the Middle Ages in France.

The Cluny Museum is housed in a 15th-century Gothic-style mansion, which itself was built on the remains of Gallo-Roman ruins.

The museum is located in the building known as the Hotel Cluny in the 5th arrondissement of Paris in the Latin Quarter.

You will see a museum with a garden on the corner of Boulevard Saint-Michel and Saint-Germain. It is very close to the Saint-Michel or Cluny-la-Sorbonne metro stations.

The Hotel Cluny was - and this was at the beginning of the 14th century - owned by the Abbot of Cluny, who headed the powerful Benedictine order.

The monks owned the building for about 100 years, after which it was given to Jacques Amboise, Bishop of Clermont, who used it as his residence and rebuilt it, adding numerous Gothic and Renaissance elements.

It is this reconstructed hotel that we can see today. There are also the Baths of Cluny - a legacy of the Roman era.

It must be said that a number of significant figures in history lived in the house at one time or another, including Mary Tudor, who was sent here after the death of her husband Louis XII.

In 1793 the state took ownership of the Hotel Cluny and it was used for various functions.

However, the true history of the collection of the Cluny Museum began when the collector Alexandre du Sommerard, who by that time already owned an impressive collection of medieval and Renaissance objects, moved there.

He brought them with him to this house, and when he died in 1842, the state inherited both the building and the collection. The museum opened only a year later.

The museum contains many famous medieval artefacts, including sculptures from the 7th and 8th centuries, important manuscripts, gold and ivory, coins and much antique furniture.

The museum has a fine collection of period tapestries woven in Flanders from wool and silk, including the famous Lady with the Unicorn tapestry. The museum also contains household items, art and clothing from the medieval period.

There is no entry fee for Europeans under 26 years of age with a photo ID. Admission is free for all visitors on the first Sunday of the month (a small fee is charged for the audio guide).

Every corner of Paris surprises with its historical richness: the Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens, the Grand Boulevard and the Latin Quarter. And the National Museum of the Middle Ages, steeped in medieval romance, is located on the corner of two boulevards: Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel - in the heart of the Latin Quarter.

Since the time when Paris was part of the Roman Empire and was called Lutetia, there were baths here, the remains of which still form one of the parts of the museum. Much later, houses began to appear next to the ancient ruins, among which was the residence of Pierre da Chalus, who headed one of the most famous abbeys of medieval France.

A hundred years later, it was reconstructed by another abbot of Cluny, Jacques d'Amboise. And today this building, the Cluny Museum, is a masterpiece of the flaming late Gothic style - the autumn of the Middle Ages, which organically combines the fading features of the Cluny mansion, as if a frozen moment of the past, gone into the darkness of centuries, with the romance of the Renaissance.

The Cluny Museum is famous for the fact that the only Roman building that has survived to this day is the frigidarium (cold bath) with completely intact vaults. In the room, which is thirteen and a half meters high and the walls are two meters thick, one could enjoy coolness on the hottest days. In cold times, the floors and walls were heated with water coming from boilers located in the basements, using clay and lead pipes. There were also hot baths (caldarium) and warm baths (tepidarium) in the castle. The luxuriously carved bathtub most likely also dates back to the ancient period, although, as is known, in those days not too much importance was paid to body hygiene.

The Cluny Museum houses collections of sculptures, manuscripts, stained glass windows brought from the castle in Rouen and from. Multicolor stained glass windows are adjacent to those from Rouen, made using a special grisaille technique, which means monochrome painting. And, in addition, the peculiarity of their manufacture lies in the fact that to create the form, not only paints were used, but also glass of varying thicknesses, which made it possible to create three-dimensional images and an extraordinary play of light.

Solid, carved furniture, chests, which were an important element of the interior and packaging for luggage, jewelry and church utensils, paintings, enamel, ceramics and ivory items, a “gallery of kings”, notable for the fact that statues and heads are displayed separately. And their history is connected with the French Revolution, when, it turns out, not only people’s heads were cut off. The figures of the headless statues ended up in the museum at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the heads themselves were accidentally discovered only a century later.

The jewel of the museum is a series of tapestries dating back to the fifteenth century. The five human senses: taste, sight, touch, smell, hearing are symbolically expressed in the paintings, the most famous of which is “The Lady with the Unicorn.” The castle has a fireplace with a chimney, which was a luxury "home appliance" for the time. And, of course, the armory with numerous exhibits: cannons with forged stripes on the barrels that served to strengthen them, armor of noble knights and kings.
Address: 6 Place Paul Painlev?

Back to Paris again. Now a short photo walk through the Cluny Museum - the national museum of the Middle Ages, which is located in the Latin Quarter at the intersection of Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel boulevards.
Back in the 14th century, the wealthy Burgundian Abbey of Cluny decided to build a hotel here for abbots visiting Paris. In the 15th century, the palace was rebuilt and this building has survived to this day. And in 1844 a museum opened here.

The museum, I must say, is very interesting. Especially for those who love Western medieval art, are interested in that era, or simply want to get to know it. Exhibits from the 5th to 15th centuries are on display here.
The museum's collection is extensive and very diverse. Here you will find ceramics, bone carvings, stained glass, tapestries, and furniture...

When I looked at these combs, I thought that their owners and mistresses in some venerable 13th century had no idea that 500 years later crowds of people would walk and look at them as things of exceptional historical and cultural value.

I paid special attention to wooden sculptures, because for our latitudes this is still very rare. It looks like wood, it seems like a rather dry material, but no, it turns out to be very plastic.

In the presented works of art, the main theme is, of course, Evangelical subjects, but there are also everyday scenes. The exhibition also includes objects made of gold and silver, both for religious and everyday purposes, of extraordinary beauty.

One pity - there were no traces of audio guides in Russian. They were in French, English, and German, but not in Russian. By the way, I also noticed that in this museum audio guides are not the only source of knowledge. Here in each hall there is a special pocket, where in several languages, except for Russian, there are sheets describing the exhibits of this hall. So for those who know foreign languages, this makes it much easier to get acquainted with the collection, but for speakers of those languages ​​whose turn it has not yet come, there is no need to be upset, because many stories, experiences and emotions are understandable without knowledge of the language.
For example, "The Kiss of Judas"

Or "Sorrow".

Here is a sculpture that especially touched me.

How hungry the baby is! He simply bites into his mother's breast. Is it possible to misunderstand and misfeel something when contemplating this?

The highlight of the exhibition, as they say, is the museum’s brand - the collection of tapestries - “The Lady with the Unicorn”.

There is even a special separate room reserved for them. Quite dark, probably so that the light would not destroy them.

There are also sculptures of Jewish kings from Notre Dame Cathedral on display here, or rather, what remains of them after the French revolutionaries worked with them.

These sculptures stand in the halls of ancient Roman baths, or, simply put, Roman baths, which were built here back in the days when Paris was called Lutetia. These baths were discovered during excavations, if I’m not mistaken, in the 19th century, after which it was decided to combine these premises with the Cluny mansion. Which was done quite organically.
In short, the museum is wonderful. There's a lot to see.

I didn’t fail to stop by the museum’s chic book and souvenir shop. There is an abundance of beautifully published books on the subject of the museum and on medieval art in general. Discs with medieval music. A huge variety of souvenirs - postcards, bookmarks, keychains, magnets, stamps, badges, puzzles (I’ve lived here, I don’t know how to define these mosaics in Russian), construction kits for collecting models of famous medieval buildings in Paris. There are many books for children about the museum. This can be seen from their design. My eyes widen. It is, of course, a great pity that there was neither a guidebook nor a book about the museum collection in Russian on sale there.

The museum itself is surrounded by a wonderful garden, where entry is available to everyone. I read somewhere that it is designed like a medieval garden, in which medicinal herbs and flowers characteristic of that time grow.

Crucifixion of the Cluny Museum in Paris. Yes, there is such a thing. To be honest, I searched for this image on the Internet for a very long time in order to at least clarify something about this crucifix. The Cluny Museum, so you understand, is a museum of medieval European art. This is not the Louvre; by default, Mesopotamian antiquities cannot be found there. Hence my doubts that such a crucifix could even be there. And yet it is there. I found confirmation of this on one of the Japanese sites. Yes, yes, no matter how funny it may sound. Therefore, I had to resort to Google Translate. This crucifix is ​​exhibited in room 10, where things from the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Church of Saint-Genevieve are exhibited. In general, this room is dedicated to the Romanesque style in European culture, this is the 11th-13th century.
The style of iconography of this crucifixion also fits into this chronological framework. I had to study a little how this very iconography developed. The first such images of the crucified Jesus appear in the 5th century. Jesus is depicted as still alive, often with his eyes open, there is an idea to show Jesus having already conquered death. The nails were driven into the palms, which in reality could not have happened. For those who were crucified, nails were never driven into their palms, only into their wrists, or even tied with ropes. The palms are simply not able to support the weight of the body and the unfortunate person would simply fall to the ground. The nailing of the palms of Jesus, with which he healed and created others in iconography, is connected with some theological concepts about the self-abasement of God, which I do not want to dwell on now and get too hung up on. The only important thing is that the crucifix is ​​Christian, medieval. Unfortunately, the Japanese describing his visit to the Cluny Museum, posting a photo of the crucifixion, did not show an accompanying explanation, however, with a high degree of probability it can be argued that this crucifix dates back to the 11-13th century, but not to 2000 BC.

The second popular one is Orpheus - Bacchus.

Let me start with the fact that I don’t remember a single myth where Orpheus was crucified. Well, okay, let’s say that there was a certain myth that has not survived to this day. Lost, so to speak, in the depths of centuries.

What can you tell about this crucifixion? This artifact has actually been on display at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin since 1922. But, already in 1926 and later in 1935, German antiquities researchers claim that this stone is a fake. It is indicated that this may be a medieval Italian work. The amulet was purchased in Italy by E. Gerhard and with his collection ended up in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. What's also interesting is that in the 15th century, Italian priest Marsilio Ficino revived Orphic magic as part of a humanist project to bring ancient wisdom back to the world. In general, this Marsilio was a very advanced person for his time, a philosopher, humanist, and astrologer. Translated ancient Greek texts into Latin, philosophers naturally. They even say he drew some Tarot cards there. Why am I all this, such an amulet could have appeared in medieval Italy, in the 15th century and later, but not in the 3rd century BC. There were preconditions. The stone was apparently removed from display back in the 1930s and disappeared during World War II. The picture shows a Photoshopped image of a stone from one of the German books.

Which also indicates that this is a fairly late item. Again, iconography. Crucifixes of this type, bent knees, fallen head, bent arms, dead or still suffering Jesus, simply put, appeared in the Middle Ages - the 13th century and above. See above for what crucifixions of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages looked like. Second. The stars and the moon on the amulet, well, here we can assume that the moment of Jesus’ death is still depicted and, as the Bible said, that the sky darkened as a sign of grief.


Well, one last thing. If the image was from the 3rd century BC, then I’m sure the cross would have been depicted in a T-shape. Like this famous picture with a donkey. By the way, I’ll talk about this topic some other time.

Or this crucifix, exhibited in the Cluny Museum, next to the “Mesopotamian” one.


And here is another interesting gem from the 4th century, exhibited at the London Museum.

Cluny Museum also known as Museum of the Middle Ages. It boasts one of the most extensive collections of art and everyday life in Europe from the period in which it is named.

The museum is located in the Hôtel de Cluny, a Gothic mansion built in the 15th century. So the French Middle Ages in the Cluny Museum are truly at every step.

What can you see at the Cluny Museum

In the Cluny Museum you can trace the development of art and objects from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Perhaps the strongest point of the museum is the ancient textiles department. However, do not forget to take a good look at other exhibits: figurines and statues, household items, all kinds of utensils, clothing, sacred artifacts.

The museum's collection is located on several floors (a detailed map of the Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris can be seen). However, to see everything, you need to go around the Cluny Museum from all sides...

• The lower level of the Cluny Museum is dedicated to the Gallo-Roman thermae (thermal baths), magnificent stained glass windows and statues.
• One floor above, the Cluny Museum displays Dame et la Licorne, the Cluny Museum's most famous exhibit. This is a kind of set of six trellises that make up a single canvas. This masterpiece is more than half a thousand years old. No one knows who created this tapestry, there are only assumptions. And its name arose only in the 19th century. The tapestry depicts the five human senses united in a single allegory: a girl communicating with a unicorn. The composition points to the delights - and dangers - that each of the senses brings: smell, odor, taste, touch, vision. At this level of the Museum of the Middle Ages there are also other objects from the designated period: fabrics, drawings, examples of wood carvings, jewelry, weapons.
• On the other side of the building (from the Boulevard Saint-Germain) there are medieval gardens, the entrance to which does not require payment.

A huge contribution to the popularization of the tapestry “The Lady with the Unicorn” was made by the French writers Prosper Mérimée and George Sand; it was they who drew public attention to the unusual tapestries, stored in not the best conditions in one of the ancient castles in France.