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1874 – 1893 · the interior as one man's work
The work, not the man: Luigi Gregori's biography — Bologna, the papal household of Pius IX, the seventeen years as Notre Dame's professor of art — stands in the Artists history in this record, and stands there whole. What belongs here is the work, because the work is this building's skin. Sorin engaged Gregori in Rome in June 1874 on the Vatican's recommendation, and the Basilica's own tour counts the result: fifty-six murals in the church, painted by Gregori, artist of the Papal Household and professor of art at Notre Dame — murals and Stations of the Cross painted, in the tour's summary, during the 1870s. The Artists history dates the Stations precisely, 1874 to 1877, and records that two of them were shown at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 before their installation — a parish church's way of the cross exhibited at a world's fair before it hung in the church it was painted for.
The program: The painted program, as the Basilica's tour and the published interior accounts describe it, covers the church in a deliberate order. Beneath the crossing, where the sanctuary begins, are the four evangelists and the Old Testament prophets, at the edge of the space where Holy Cross religious profess their vows and are ordained. In the choir, the published account names the company on either side: to the left of the choir, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Gregory the Great and Ignatius of Loyola; to the right, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Augustine of Hippo and Benedict of Nursia. The Lady Chapel's ceiling carries Gregori's painting of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the subject the chapel was historically named for. On the west side his mural of Our Lady of Lourdes shows the apparition to St. Bernadette in 1858 — the tour singles it out by name among the fifty-six. The tour also preserves who sat for all this: members of Gregori's family, and the university's faculty and students, served as models for many of the scenes, and the Holy Cross priests and brothers then living on campus modeled the figures of the Stations — the congregation painted itself into its own church.
Storage and return: The murals' modern course belongs to the restorations entry below, but its hinge belongs to the work itself: in the Vatican II renovation of the late 1960s Gregori's Stations were taken down and put in storage, and in the Conrad Schmitt restoration of 1988–91 they were brought back and rehung — the Basilica's history page records both moves. The interior a visitor sees is therefore not an untouched survival but a recovered one. One photograph of that interior stands in this record at pointer size: Paul B. Miller's picture of the Rev. Edward Keller, C.S.C. kneeling at the altar of Sacred Heart Church, accepted at seven salons and printed as the Scholastic's Picture of the Week in the final issue of 1948–49 — the Photographers history carries it whole.
Sources
- University of Notre Dame, Campus Ministry — Self-Guided Tour of the Basilica: the fifty-six murals; the evangelists and prophets beneath the crossing; the Lady Chapel ceiling's Exaltation of the Holy Cross; the Lourdes mural; the models — Gregori's family, faculty, students, and the Holy Cross priests and brothers in the Stations.
- The Artists history in this record — Gregori engaged by Sorin in Rome in June 1874 on the Vatican's recommendation; the Stations painted 1874–1877, two shown at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 before installation.
- The published interior accounts of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Notre Dame) — the choir's painted company: the Sacred Heart, Gregory the Great and Ignatius of Loyola to the left; the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Augustine and Benedict to the right.
- University of Notre Dame — the Basilica's history page (basilica.nd.edu): the Stations in storage in the Vatican II renovation and returned in the 1989-beginning restoration.
- The Photographers history in this record — Paul B. Miller's Sacred Heart photograph of 1948–49.