II. A tower of ink. Iconography

   Illuminators, painters, draughtsmen and engravers have depicted the Tower of Nesle from various angles, all of which offer as many original perspectives, sometimes showing us the center of Paris, the island of the Cité or the Pont-Neuf, sometimes the Louvre and the surrounding countryside. Very often, the tower of Nesle is seen in the background, as a visual element of identification of Paris or as a point of reference in the urban landscape.
   The second part thus brings together the illuminated manuscript, the engraved views of Paris in the sixteenth century, the sumptuous prints of Jacques Callot or Israël Silvestre to give the image of a tower «of after nature». But it also presents the work of engravers, illustrators, painters – often lovers of archaeology or even archaeologists themselves – of the 19^_th century, the Hoffbauer, Viollet-le-Duc or Robida, authors of real (re)romantic creations of the tower then disappeared for more than two centuries.

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« The tour de Nesle, plan and perspective view », wood engraving, by Auguste-Étienne Guillaumot (based on drawings by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc), in : Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XI^_e au XVI^_e siècle, Paris, 1858-1968, t. IX (1868), article « Tour ».

   In keeping with its scientific «imaginary» and its principles of restoration of historical monuments, the Tour de Nesle presented by Viollet-le-Duc in his dictionary of architecture is a mixture of restitution in a state reputed original and elements derived from his imagination. Thus, if he is the first to restore the drawbridge linked to the sleeper bridge of the Nesle gate, he caps the towers of it with imaginary bell peppers. It should be noted that the engraver, his student Auguste-Étienne Guillaumot, uses the end wood engraving technique to allow the interpenetration of the text and the image printed on the same page.

MAZARINE : 8° 30386 N

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