11 juin 2007
The black virgin
Since
always, Mills and its area were devoted to the goddess-mother, then
with the virgin. The black virgin of Mills is a virgin in majesty of
XIème century, which was strengthened in XVème. the popular belief
makes of it a gift of Saint Louis and the history would like that it
was brought back from Palestine by a lord of Bourbon.
There
were in Moulins two black virgins, of which one works of a local
sculptor. The black virgin stopped in 1655 the fire which started to
destroy the city, by the action of an inhabitant who threw in the
flames the coat of the statue.
There was habit to make burn in front of Notre-Dame de Moulins a wax wheel, solar symbol of regeneration, as in Marsat
(Black Virgins, Jacques Bonvin)
The triptych of the Master of Moulins
The
treasure of the cathedral has, in the sacristy of the chapter,
celebrates it triptych of the Virgin in glory (about 1501) of the
“Master of Mills”, whose identity remains unknown in spite of various
attributions of which that of the museum of Louvre to the painter Jean
Hey.
Masterpiece
of French art, it was carried out for Pierre II, duke of Bourbon, and
Anne of France, which one sees both on each side of the Virgin in
glory, accompanied by Suzanne, their daughter. Saint hones introduces
the duke, Sainte Anne his wife and his daughter.
It
is a retable, with an external greyness representing the Annunciation.
Then inside, it is the gushing of the colors, the quality of painting,
the sensitivity of the faces and the hands.
The Virgin is wrapped of sun, it with the moon under the feet and is crowned of 12 stars: it is the ierge apocalypse.
http://triptyquemoulins.free.fr/
Cathedral Notre-Dame de Moulins
The first mention of dwellings in a place naming Moulins goes up to 990.
Mills
became capital duchy of Bourbon, with the detriment of Souvigny,
starting from the accession with the duchy, in 1488, of Pierre II
(1438-1503), said Pierre de Beaujeu, husband since 1474 of Anne of
France (1461-1522).
The cathedral
Before
1390, there existed, with the site of the chorus, a small vault
dedicated to Our-Lady On the initiative of Louis II, it was demolished
to build collegial, was replaced in its turn in 1468 by the current
collegial one with vaster dimensions.
The
oldest part of the current building, built in Gothic style blazing, its
first stone was posed by Agnès of Burgundy, mother of Jean the Good,
duke of Burgundy, and widow of the duke Charles Ier de Bourbon. Work
continued under the duke Pierre II of Bourbon and his wife, the Anne
duchess of France, girl of Louis XI. They finished about 1540 by a
simple wall of frontage decorated with a pink. The collegial one, built
out of yellow and red sandstone, was made up of a directed vessel,
flanked sides on lesqueles opened side chapels. Its Eastern frontage
had a flat bedside. It currently constitutes the chorus of the
cathedral.
Mills
was set up in évêché in 1822. The first bishop, Antoine of the Barn of
Pons, establishes his episcopal see with Notre-Dame and decided
enlarging of this church, become too exigüe. Its successor,
Pierre-Simon-Louis-Marie de Dreux-Brézé undertook important work: the
nave, whose surface are doubled, the two collateral ones and the
harmonic frontage with its two 81 meters high arrows.
These
architectural additions are carried out in style neogothic, under the
influence of Viollet-The-Duke. The Parisian architect Lassus - to which
one owes the restoration of Notre-Dame of Chartres, the Holy Vault and
Notre-Dame of Paris from which it built the sacristy - began work which
was continued by Millet and Selmersheim after the death of Lassus in
1857.
