Paris Journal 2014 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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I paused every eight feet or so as we walked down the Pont Saint Michel. I took photos at each interval. “One of these will turn out to be the exact place where Francis LeCoadic painted a wintertime view of the Seine,” I thought. We own the painting. Tom brought it home from the Iona Hope Thrift Shop one day, a month and a half ago. I cleaned it, and brought its colors back to life. Here’s the painting:
The artist made Pont Neuf look nearer. He painted this scene in 1956, making the painting only a few months younger than I am. The bridge where he sat has not changed. Pont Saint Michel, as it is now, was constructed in 1857. The first Pont Saint Michel was made of stone in 1378. Houses were rapidly built upon it, and in 1408, an ice-clogged Seine carried them all away, along with the bridge itself. Reconstruction of the bridge happened right away, but the administration at that time could only afford wood, due to hardships brought on by the Hundred Years War. The Parliament of Paris recognized that the wood was inferior to stone, and so allocated the receipts of fines to the improvement of the bridge. The wooden bridge, with wooden houses upon it, appears in a miniature painting by Jean Fouquet (below). He painted this scene between 1452 and 1460.
If such a bridge existed in 1956, Francis LeCoadic would have to be sitting just inside one of those houses on the bridge, looking through a window, to get the perspective of the Pont Neuf that he portrayed. Other illustrations in 1550 and 1577 still show Pont Saint Michel as a wooden bridge with wooden houses. But by 1623, a new bridge was completed, with a foundation like that of the Rialto bridge in Venice – still using wooden pilings. There were two rows of houses on the new bridge, too, but a decree to remove all buildings from bridges in Paris was issued in 1786. The buildings were not removed from the Pont Saint Michel until 1808. So it wasn’t that much later that the current bridge was built (1857). A little over five years after Francis LeCoadic sat (or stood) on this bridge to paint his wintertime view of the Seine, looking toward Pont Neuf, a terrible thing happened there. Maurice Papon, who had inexplicably been put in charge of the Paris police, ordered a violent suppression of a peaceful demonstration against one of his curfews. This was the Paris Massacre of 1961. Many of the 100 to 300 demonstrators who were murdered in this event were thrown into the Seine from Pont Saint Michel after being beaten unconscious by the police. Papon had also ordered deportation of over 1600 Jews in World War II, and he ordered yet another massacre in 1962. He did that with impunity, because after all, President de Gaulle had awarded the Legion of Honour to Papon in 1961. It was not until 1998 that Papon was convicted of his crimes against humanity, and all of his awards and decorations were revoked. 1998 was the first summer that Tom and I spent in Paris. I remember the news articles about Papon. What an outrage – that he was allowed to have the long and dark career that he did! He died just seven years ago, at age 96.
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Friday, July 25, 2014 Below
is the scene from the Pont Saint Michel.
The tower on the Palais du Justice building on the right is covered with
scaffolding and scenic screening while cleaning and restoration work is being
done.
Last
night’s sunset.
Paris
Plage, from the Pont au Change. |
