Behind
the high altar of Saint Sauveur’s Gothic nave, a small chapel dedicated
to Saint Mitre contains a fifteenth century painting depicting
an important moment in the life of the saint. (He has just picked up
his severed head) Some accounts say that he kissed it, though this
episode appears to have been beyond the powers of the artist. The cathedral
tower is portrayed uncrowned, which is the way it was until the end
of the nineteenth century. The palaces that surround it, however, are
variously interpreted as the product of a fertile “Renaissance”
fantasy - the artist was of the school of Avignon - or as the unique
surviving record of Aix’s architecture in the late fifteenth century.
The
monument Sec in the avenue Pasteur, is an
incongruous and eclectic medley of autobiographical, socio-economic,
and biblical fantasy with a touch of freemasonry: Moses, Noah, European
and African homo sapiens sapiens, the Old Testament and the New, Joseph
Sec, the new, himself, and the other Joseph, also a carpenter, commemorate
a moment when high thinking was undergoing Rousseauesque revision; liberty
from bondage, the spirits of time and eternity, feedom and slavery,
were clamouring, if not for precedence, at least for a supreme pecking
order. No Jehovah or royal vicar by divine right, but Themis implacable,
female personification of even-handed justice, scales in hand, crowns
the highest pinnacle of the monument above Moses himself with his books
of the Law, and gazes incorruptibly in the general direction of Marseille
(why not?). The 17th century statuary that borders the garden behind
the monument itself is a typically discriminate instance of “borrowing,”
in this case from the unforunate Jesuits who were ousted from their
chapel in 1765. The pavillon next to the monument is noteworthy for
its multicolored tiled roof, unique in a town where the ancient Roman
curved tile is synonymous with a certain proximity to the northern shores
of the Mediterranean.
The other
Aixois “revolutionary” is quite a different proposition. The
ancient palace of the counts of Provence, a rambling patchwork of
a building embracing three Roman towers and the substantial mediaeval
masonry that united them, was abruptly condemned in 1775, less for its
dilapidation and the tile that injured a passer-by than for the huff
of Parliamentarians who had been evicted from it in 1771, and replaced
by detestable
upstarts
from the national Audit Office. Thus disappeared Aix’s largest
and most ancient Roman survival. But construction of the Palais de
Justice was suspended until 1822; its massive pillars and perron
greet those arriving by the ancientvia Aurelia, (rue d’Italie.)
It was not completed until 1832. The ancient stones of the counts’
palace became modern rubble, serving to raise the level of the road
from Marseille, giving to the Cours Mirabeau both direct access and
a fine platform for Aix’s biggest, most effusive fountain. The
Monument Sec and the Palais de Justice emerge as different statements
of the same “enlightened” eighteenth century. The majesty
of “the Law” fills the void created by the demise of royal
and ecclesiastical authority.
The
church of St.John of Malta (Saint Jean de Malte)
stands at the eastern end of the rue Cardinale. Its stark simplicity
offers a striking contrast to the venerable but heteroclete bazaar of
the cathedral. Built in the second half of the 13th century, it is a
fine example of Provençal Gothic, bare, and spare as a Cistercian
abbey. Built outside the city walls it was protector and host to pilgrims
and travellers on their way from Italy. Its 67 meter spire and promise
of safe haven doubtless gladdened hearts and hastened steps along the
Aurelian Way. At each angle of the west end, a turret, more military
than ecclesiastical, more plain than fancy, stands guard; three tall
defence towers dating from the thirteenth century, two to the south
and one to the north announced to roving brigands, cutthroats, and routiers
that the Knights-Hospitaliers of Saint John meant business, and that
order could be enforced, even outside the city ramparts. The northern
tower still stands, gaunt and forbidding in its bourgeois habit at No.
20, rue d’Italie.
Behind
the high altar of Saint Sauveur’s Gothic nave, a small chapel dedicated
to Saint Mitre contains a fifteenth century painting depicting
an important moment in the life of the saint. (He has just picked up
his severed head) Some accounts say that he kissed it, though this
episode appears to have been beyond the powers of the artist. The cathedral
tower is portrayed uncrowned, which is the way it was until the end
of the nineteenth century. The palaces that surround it, however, are
variously interpreted as the product of a fertile “Renaissance”
fantasy - the artist was of the school of Avignon - or as the unique
surviving record of Aix’s architecture in the late fifteenth century.
The
monument Sec in the avenue Pasteur, is an
incongruous and eclectic medley of autobiographical, socio-economic,
and biblical fantasy with a touch of freemasonry: Moses, Noah, European
and African homo sapiens sapiens, the Old Testament and the New, Joseph
Sec, the new, himself, and the other Joseph, also a carpenter, commemorate
a moment when high thinking was undergoing Rousseauesque revision; liberty
from bondage, the spirits of time and eternity, feedom and slavery,
were clamouring, if not for precedence, at least for a supreme pecking
order. No Jehovah or royal vicar by divine right, but Themis implacable,
female personification of even-handed justice, scales in hand, crowns
the highest pinnacle of the monument above Moses himself with his books
of the Law, and gazes incorruptibly in the general direction of Marseille
(why not?). The 17th century statuary that borders the garden behind
the monument itself is a typically discriminate instance of “borrowing,”
in this case from the unforunate Jesuits who were ousted from their
chapel in 1765. The pavillon next to the monument is noteworthy for
its multicolored tiled roof, unique in a town where the ancient Roman
curved tile is synonymous with a certain proximity to the northern shores
of the Mediterranean. 
The
church of St.John of Malta (Saint Jean de Malte)
stands at the eastern end of the rue Cardinale. Its stark simplicity
offers a striking contrast to the venerable but heteroclete bazaar of
the cathedral. Built in the second half of the 13th century, it is a
fine example of Provençal Gothic, bare, and spare as a Cistercian
abbey. Built outside the city walls it was protector and host to pilgrims
and travellers on their way from Italy. Its 67 meter spire and promise
of safe haven doubtless gladdened hearts and hastened steps along the
Aurelian Way. At each angle of the west end, a turret, more military
than ecclesiastical, more plain than fancy, stands guard; three tall
defence towers dating from the thirteenth century, two to the south
and one to the north announced to roving brigands, cutthroats, and routiers
that the Knights-Hospitaliers of Saint John meant business, and that
order could be enforced, even outside the city ramparts. The northern
tower still stands, gaunt and forbidding in its bourgeois habit at No.
20, rue d’Italie.