2014-Winter-DU-Magazine

RISEN CHRIST
Risen Christ
Sculpture Dedicated
The ongoing renovation of Duquesne’s Chapel of the
Holy Spirit continued with the September installation of the new
Risen Christ sculpture. The artwork is the culmination of a twoyear
effort to find a suitable replacement for the chapel’s previous
cross and structure.
The Risen Christ’s journey to Duquesne began in the summer
of 2012, when President Charles Dougherty traveled to the
Spiritan orphanage at Auteuil in Paris, where Blessed Daniel
Brottier spent a career building a small orphanage into one of
the largest and most progressive in France. Before Brottier’s
tomb stands a striking modern version of a Risen Christ, and
Dougherty—in consultation with former Vice President for
Mission and Identity James McCloskey, C.S.Sp., and current
Vice President for Mission and Identity Raymond French,
C.S.Sp.—decided that something similar would be ideal for the
University’s chapel.
Duquesne contacted the sculpture’s creator, French artist
Sebastien Touret, who agreed to create an exact replica for the
University. Today, the wooden Risen Christ resides in the Chapel
of the Holy Spirit, where special lighting creates two shadows
that represent the thieves crucified with Christ.
The Risen Christ was formally dedicated in October. The dedication
featured artist Sebastien Touret, who traveled from France to join
the celebration. His remarks about his work are below:
It is quite an impressive mission
to find oneself having to represent
Christ.
Is it even possible to show Him? We
can evoke Him through an attitude,
a gesture, within the challenges of
carving and the reality of a material—
oak wood in this case.
This oak, not long ago, was a living
tree full of sap. It was cut down and
became a beam, in a neat square
shape, and lifeless.
The sculptor seizes it, and work
begins as the precise tools bring out
the sawdust and shavings.
The beam loses its rigidity, its inertia.
Thanks to your commissioning of
the sculpture and to the sculpting
work, a character appears—a man.
The wood has become living, the
most alive of the Living, the Risen
Christ resurrected. He comes out of
the tomb, springing from his shroud.
This sculpture has a twinned
presence in Paris, which I sculpted
with my late father, Jean Touret, for
the Chapel of Orphans in d’Auteuil.
With hope this sculpture lives up
to the huge ambition of the humble
sculptor: creating a life-giving
presence in this place of yours
and in your midst.
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