Critic Ian Nairn passed a damning judgment on Notre Dame in the 1960s, calling it “one of the most pessimistic buildings in the world no hope of change, and no glimmer of ultimate purpose,” adding that “Viollet-le-Duc’s musty and self-righteous cackle can be heard all over the building”. Victorian architect William Burges called him a “disastrous restorationist”, while Charles Hiatt’s 1902 account of the cathedral’s redecorated interior bemoaned that “the colour confuses our appreciation of the fine lines of the architecture, and it is frequently restless and irritating where it should be most reposeful”. History hasn’t been kind to Viollet-le-Duc’s work. Around this great flèche, he concocted a fantastical menagerie of apostles and mythical creatures – most of which appear to have been saved from the flames, having already been removed for restoration. His enormous spire, made of 500 tons of wood and 250 tons of lead, was a far cry from the previous tower (removed in 1786 due to instability), modelled instead on a 19th-century spire in Orléans. Over the next 25 years, he would mould Notre Dame according to his own romantic vision, adding elaborate layers of ornament and decorative statues of entirely his own invention. His writing spurred on calls for a full restoration, eventually undertaken by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who was just 30 when he won the commission with Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus in 1845. It was Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris (translated as The Hunchback of Notre Dame) that brought the cathedral’s plight to widespread attention, raising alarm about the “mutilations, amputations dislocations” of the structure, and making gothic architecture touch the popular imagination in a way it never had before. The cathedral was heavily damaged by rioting Huguenots in the 16th century, remodelled by successive kings and roundly plundered during the French Revolution, when the 28 statues of biblical figures on the west façade, mistaken for French kings, were ritually beheaded. The only solace one might take from the horrific fire is that it is merely the latest chapter in a long and violent history of destruction and repair. Photograph: Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images Notre Dame c.1900 … enough to make Pugin faint.
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