Henri Matisse, Maquette per la Croce-campanile della Cappella di Vence

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Henri Matisse, Maquette per la Croce-campanile della Cappella di Vence
Henri Matisse, Maquette per la Croce-campanile della Cappella di Vence
Room 13. Matisse cabinet

This 1:20 scale model was donated to Paul VI by the Dominican sisters of Vence and then entered the collection by Pope Montini’s bequest. It is a maquette for the wrought-iron cross and church tower for the roof of the Chapel of Vence. Punctuated by counter-posed half-moon motifs evoking the Mediterranean east, the Flèche gives the impression of having been gently placed on top of the chapel. In a letter to his friend, the writer André Rouveyre, Matisse imagined it thus: “It should be like the smoke of a chimney that rises, thin and light, in the calm of the evening”. In reality, assembling the cross, which took place in summer 1950, was laborious and required a number of structural adjustments on account of the weight of the materials and the height at which it had to be raised.