For the members of the association " Paysage et patrimoine sans frontière "the project " Langages du bleu " is the opportunity to discover the blues of their own city and country: the blue of France in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and in Paris and the" bleu Nabi" to the Maurice Denis Museum

Royal blue, blue of France .

The arms show a cot as a symbol that the French King Louis XIV was born in the town on the 5th of July 1638. The fleur-de-lis in the chief is the symbol of the Royal family

This blazon, which was granted to the city by obvious letter, 17th August 1820 by king Louis XVIII, reminds the royal vocation of the city, since the construction in the XIIth century of the castle, the principal residence of the kings: Philipe Auguste, Saint Louis, Philippe IV le Bel, Charles V, François 1st, Louis XIII or Louis XIV to quote only these sovereigns…
The international closing colloquium of the project" Langages du bleu ’ will be welcomed in the Royal Chapel in Saint Germain, major work of the ’Rayonnant’ phase of french gothic architecture built by Saint Louis in 1238. Within the training framework proposed by the association "paysage et patrimoine sans friontière " to its members, a visit-conference is organized in the " Holy Chapel " built by the same king on the" Ile de la Cité" in the heart of Paris from 1240 till 1248. These monuments were "Saintes Chapelles" or " Holy Chapels , to house the Christs’ crown of thorns. Louis IX purchased this precious relic, from Baldwin II, the latin Emperor of Constantinople, in 1238.

In situ , we become aware of by its plan and architecture, Saint Germain’s chapel is the prefiguration of that of Paris. The construction sites of both prestigious buildings are entrusted to the same architect Pierre de Montreuil, who adapts in Paris the architectural concepts invented in Saint-Germain-en-Laye: a single nave, culminating in a chevet with seven panels , great stained glass windows and exterior buttresses supporting the walls of the chapel .

Blue Nabi Maurice Denis Museum . Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

The confrontation with different paintings of the museum is the opportunity to discover the value of the blue in the works of the Nabis : its spiritual and symbolic connotations.
The blue of the Maurice Denis chapel or the painted walls of Eternal Spring are differents from some azure and approache the Rumanian albastru blue - a white or bright blue, of the Latin albus, white and astrum, star-.
Camille Mauclair speaks, in the "Revue Bleue " about these peculiar colors to Maurice Denis which merge as a " white dream ", " these combinations of blue and mauve skies (…) shadow games of clear and matt lights, the whole without reason, without subject which we can tell ".

Article drafted by Aline Rutily.
Photos: Jean Soulier, Bernard Capillon