A series of images allowed the public to discover the rose windows of cathedrals through a visual and colorful immersion, during a conference led by François Bourdon, as part of the continuing education program of the University of Permanent Culture (UCP). The speaker presented a work combining history, music, and a scientific approach. “It is a conference that takes place in the Middle Ages with a background of music by Jean-Sébastien Bach, Richard Wagner… and on the mathematics of nature. Today, it concerns cathedral roses,” explained the man at the microphone, interested in the subject for over four decades. He offers around thirty presentations each year.
He draws on a selection of rose windows from various buildings.
A Geometrical and Comparative Approach
The conference addresses rose windows from different angles. “First the geometry of the roses and then the structure, the color… and also the roses of mosques that exist in ceramics, in the form of small meticulously placed squares, unlike those that appear on stained glass windows in cathedrals,” specified François Bourdon.
The speaker also mentioned the origin of his interest. “My father was already a great enthusiast of the Middle Ages. In 1975, the academician Gorges Nuby had produced eight TV programs on the Middle Ages between 900 and 1350, visible on YouTube. This is probably an explanation of my interest in the light of roses in cathedrals,” he concluded.
Upcoming Conferences on Tuesdays at 2:30 pm at the Rio: History of diamonds in Lorraine with Élisabeth Bauer-Grosse, professor emeritus at the University of Lorraine, on Tuesday, April 7; Asmara, capital of Eritrea, its colonial architecture from the 1930s with Jean-Pierre Fabert, doctor in linguistics, on Tuesday, April 28; A disappeared activity: timber rafting with Daniel Bontemps, historian and writer, on Tuesday, May 5; Between Slovenia and Croatia, the mysterious Istria with Frédéric Maguin, heritage tour guide, on Tuesday, May 12; StartFragment Jean-François Champollion, two centuries since the decipherment of hieroglyphs with Hazem El Shafei, Egyptologist, president of the Institute of Civilizations of the Mediterranean Basin and the Middle East, on Tuesday, May 19; Please Sleep! Some anecdotes about anesthesia with Hubert Tonnelier, emergency physician, on Tuesday, May 26; women and film music. Talented yet so rare with Jean-Marc Illi, professor emeritus of musicology at the University of Lorraine, on Tuesday, June 2.
