Saint-Sulpice: Delacroix's Angel and the Da Vinci Code Myth
Why is it significant?
Stand in Place Saint-Sulpice by the fountain and look across at the church: a two-storey wall of columns, and two towers that do not match. The one on the left is shorter and was never finished. The builders ran out of time, money and, eventually, the Revolution arrived.
Key Facts
| Place | Saint-Sulpice: Delacroix's Angel and the Da Vinci Code Myth |
|---|---|
| Address | 2 Rue Palatine, 75006 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.85100, 2.33490 |
| Part of Walk | Ink, Coffee and Revolution: A Literary Walk Through Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand in Place Saint-Sulpice by the fountain and look across at the church: a two-storey wall of columns, and two towers that do not match. The one on the left is shorter and was never finished. The builders ran out of time, money and, eventually, the Revolution arrived.
Saint-Sulpice took well over a century to build, from 1646, and it is one of the largest churches in Paris. Victor Hugo married Adèle Foucher here in 1822, and both the Marquis de Sade and Charles Baudelaire were baptised here, which says something about the range of the parish. Just inside the doors, look for the two holy-water basins: they are giant seashells, a gift from the Republic of Venice to King Francis the First.
Then go to the first chapel on the right. In his last great work, finished in 1861, Eugène Delacroix painted Jacob Wrestling with the Angel. Jacob struggles with all his weight, while the angel holds him off almost gently, as if amused. Delacroix was old and ill, and he moved house to be near this chapel. You will see that house at the end of the walk.
Now find the thin brass line running across the floor and up to a white marble obelisk in the north transept. It is a gnomon, an astronomical instrument from the 1740s. Sunlight through a small hole in a window falls on the line and marks the solstices and equinoxes, which helped fix the date of Easter. In 2003 the novel The Da Vinci Code turned it into the Rose Line, a secret pagan meridian. The church put up a notice politely explaining that none of that is true.
Outside, the fountain in the square shows four great preachers of the seventeenth century, all of them bishops, none of them ever made a cardinal. Parisians call it the Fountain of the Four Cardinal Points, a pun, because in French point also means never. From the square, walk north up Rue Bonaparte to the old abbey with the square bell tower.