While doing some research, the following note about gargoyles caught my attention. “They are perhaps most famously illustrated in the etchings of the 19th-century French printmaker Charles Méryon.” (Clarke 107)
What’s this? I had never heard of Méryon before, but I figured that I should look him up if he’s somehow significant to gargoyles. I soon learned that Charles Méryon (1821-1868) was a very talented French etcher who is best known for his series of prints depicting Paris. (Etching is a form of printmaking.) One of his most famous prints depicts a grotesque on the façade of Notre-Dame de Paris.
Charles Méryon, “Le Stryge”, 1853, etching on paper. The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Google Art Project.We’ve all seen this little dude. He’s not an actual medieval gargoyle. He’s in fact a 19th-century grotesque created by restorer Viollet-le-Duc, but he’s certainly the most famous “gargoyle” on Notre-Dame if not in the whole world. Méryon called it “Le Stryge”, which means “vampire” in French. He used it as the frontispiece for his book of Paris views, called Eaux-fortes sur Paris, and lots of people saw it that way. Apparently, Méryon’s image is a big part of how this grotesque became so iconic.
Le Stryge in real (stone) life. Photo by gadgetdude via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
If you’re interested, you can learn more about Meryon here. Unfortunately, it’s not a happy story.
Sources
Clarke, Michael. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Art Terms. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
“Le Stryge, Notre Dame de Paris” in Gravely Gorgeous: Gargoyles, Grotesques & the Nineteenth-Century Imagination. Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art & Cornell University Library, 2002.
Alexandra Kiely, aka A Scholarly Skater, is an art historian based in the northeastern United States. She loves wandering down the dark and dusty corners of art history and wholeheartedly believes in visual art's ability to enrich every person's life.
Her favorite periods of art history are 19th-century American painting and medieval European art and architecture. When she not looking at, reading about, writing about, or teaching art, she's probably ice dancing or reading.
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A Scholarly Skater 
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