Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

calculated to produce effect & to impress a stranger with a feeling of awe, which the consciousness that all around is
sacred to the dead & the general solemnity of the building are equally fitted to encrease [sic]. 39
Figure 25 Lenoir's Jardin Elysée, the tomb of Abelard and Heloise on the right
Turner was not entirely pleased. He thought Lenoir’s wall decorations unsuitable to the
funereal atmosphere but in the convent garden or Jardin Elysée he was once again captivated.
Here Lenoir had assembled the salvaged tombs of Descartes, Molière, the great antiquary
Montfaucon, La Fontaine and others. The ‘leading feature of the garden’, however, was the tomb
of Abelard and Heloise [fig: 25]. 40 This tomb, which does indeed contain the remains of the
lovers, is a composite. The figure of Abelard lies next to a figure of the same date but otherwise
unconnected with Heloise. From this sculpture Lenoir had the original face removed and
replaced with a copy by a modern artist of a portrait said to be of Heloise herself. Over the tomb
he constructed a canopy made up from fragments of a chapel he had rescued from St Denis [fig:
26]. Whittington no doubt wondered, as one might, what exactly this object was, ancient or
modern, real or fake. To most of the visitors, however, such questions were not troublesome.
They accepted it as Lenoir presented it and indeed it has entered history on its own terms. It is
today one of the most visited tombs in Père Lachaise cemetery and has recently been restored. It
is also a monument to that phase of antiquarianism where association, the experience of an object
or of a setting, weighed equally with authenticity.
39
Turner, ‘Journal of a Tour to France, 1814’, f 174 and note, in brackets, 173v.
40
Turner, ‘Journal of a Tour to France, 1814’, f 175.
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