Notre-Dame de Paris after the fire

[by Marion Rivolier in Paris] 

As everyone knows and saw it, Notre-Dame de Paris ignited last Monday night. The roof, the frame and the spire went up in smoke under the amazed eyes of Parisians… From my seventh floor, I saw the beginning of the fire, a thick yellow smoke in the distance, bigger than usual, astonishing and disturbing. Then I saw flames, it was so far that I did not understand how I could see them.

And then suddenly, I did not see the flames… the spire fell.

Two days later I went to see Notre-Dame, I had some difficulties to go from the right bank to the left bank because the forbidden perimeter is wide. I saw the south facade, under the remains of scaffolding, we guess the shape of the roof. It is very strange, tourists do not know where the roof was and what is missing. In fact, only the stone remains; the wood, the tiles, the lead, everything has disappeared. I’m late, I do not have time to draw something.

Saturday, I went to see her again. I approached it on the eastern side. From the quai d’Orléans, I see the back. We can guess the shape of the roof in the design of the scaffolding. A crane emerges between the two towers of the facade, it looks like a trace, the memory, of the lost spire. I settle on the dock near the Seine to paint it, a first time in its new state. I know that soon the scaffolding will be dismantled, the roof emptied, the pinion consolidated.

During the next few years, Notre-Dame will change her face often… There will probably be some watercolors to mark these stages.