21 – St Michel …

The Spire statue

Gazing up skywards we now had a magnificent view of the spire crowning the abbey.  The gilt statue of St Michel, the same one that as tiny a speck as it had seemed earlier had glinted in the sunlight and beckoned us across the miles, was now clearly visible, the detail of his winged presence continuing to encourage us to complete the last few paces required to enter the abbey. (Click on the image to view an enlarged version)

The work is by Emmanuel Fremiet, commissioned in 1894 to design the statue during restoration of the Abbey.  It depicts St Michel slaying the dragon – a typical pose of the Archangel in classical art – both in paintings and in sculpture. The dragon refers of course to Satan, Lucifer or the Devil, the story being told biblically as follows:

And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels: And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven: And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. (Revelation 12:7-9)

Fremiet had gained some degree of artistic fame following the exhibition of his 1874 statue of Joan of Arc a work displaying a strong sense of realism, continued here in Fremiet’s St Michel. This piece was actually a two metre scaled enlargement of an earlier commercially produced 1879 Fremiet statuette of a mere fifty centimetres. Produced by the studios of Monduit, Mont St Michel’s statue is of gold leafed repoussé copper, for the weight of a bronze casting would have made its mounting on the spire impossible. A second rendition is on display in Paris’ Musée d’Orsay.

It is magnificent.