Le
Stryge, Notre Dame de Paris
In
1854, the noted etcher, Charles Meryon, produced a series of Parisian
views in which Notre Dame de Paris figured prominently. His brooding
picture of the apse, surrounded with ominous ravens, drew heavily from
Hugo’s dark vision of the structure. Meryon also featured one of
Viollet-le-Duc’s grotesque figures, which he called le
stryge, the vampire, as his frontispiece. Meryon’s work did
much to publicize the figure, and ever since, the stryge
has been the best known of Viollet-le-Duc’s creatures, and possibly
the most famous grotesque in Europe.
John Taylor Arms’s etching of the figure pays homage to Meryon’s
earlier work. Arms captured the beast’s frightening, yet comical
nature: holding its head in a gesture of boredom, it contemplates the
city of Paris below. Arms satirically entitled his image, Le Penseur,
the thinker. John Taylor Arms is best known for his etchings of medieval
churches in Europe. Trained as an architect at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, he expressed through his choice of subjects his antiquarian
interest in Gothic architecture.