You don’t have to travel very far in France to see the name Eugène Viollet-le-Duc displayed on some type of medieval landmark be it a castle, a cathedral or a private building. In our case, we just look across the river to the walled fortress of La Cité de Carcassonne (photo at the very top of our blog) on which he began reconstruction work in 1853 or to the downtown 13th century cathedral Saint-Michel that’s a short walk from home. We had also seen his magic touch in Paris at the cathedral Notre-Dame-de-Paris, city hall, and the jewel-like Sainte-Chapelle plus elsewhere including Mont Saint-Michel, and in Amiens, Strasbourg, and Toulouse. On one list I counted 52 massive worksites around the country where he led the restoration in his 43-year career as an architect. But it’s something much smaller of his that’s on display this summer at our Museum of Fine Arts.

While traveling in Paris in 1957, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright said that Viollet-le-Duc’s book, Les Entretiens sur L’architecture, “was the only sensible book on architecture in the world”. Others who acknowledged the influence of this French artist upon their own works included Anton Gaudi, Émile Gallé, William Morris, and Louis Comfort Tiffany.

It’s someone like Tiffany who might especially have enjoyed the fine craftsmanship on the reliquaires (containers that hold the remains of a saint or other holy person) we saw this week. The exhibit’s curator pointed out that although Viollet-le-Duc was an agnostic he recognized the beauty of the exterior of the religious buildings he was restoring and wanted worthy pieces of art to display inside. Prior to April 15, 2019 these golden treasures, designed or inspired by Viollet-le-Duc’s passion for the decorative arts, and crafted by goldsmiths, had been kept at the cathedral Notre-Dame-de-Paris but during the devastating fire that evening they were moved for safekeeping to Le Louvre. It’s thanks to a partnership between this world’s most-visited art museum and our own Musée des Beaux-Arts that these trésors will be in Carcassonne until the first of October. Entrance is free.