Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Cairo-on-Seine: Answer

2, place du Caire, 1828. 2nd arrondissement. Metro: Sentier

Photo: Mary B. Shepard
The Nile runs right into Cairo: the rue de Nil (that is) runs into the place du Caire and this amazing building facade from 1828.

It's all here, from the columns with lotus-petal capitals:
Photo: Mary B. Shepard
To the cavetto cornice topping the entrance to the shopping passage "du Caire." Its solar disk is quite splendid as it also contains an uraeus -- the symmetrically rearing cobras that were a symbol of both the sun-god Re and adopted as part of the pharaoh's regalia. 

Photo: Mary B. Shepard
Three fantastic reliefs depicting the head of the goddess Hathor (recognizable by her distinctive cow-like ears) festoon the center of the building. They are direct descendants of  the Hathor-capitals of the Great Temple at Dendera (54-20 BCE), recorded in Dominique-Vivant Denon's influential book with lavish engravings, Description de l'Égypte (Description of Egypt), produced following the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt. 

Photo: Mary B. Shepard

Denon wrote that "Dendera . . . taught me that it was not at all in the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders alone that one ought to seek the beauties of architecture. . ." 
(Paris, Ottawa, and Vienna 1994)

Photo: Mary B. Shepard
At the very summit of the building, there is another cavetto cornice with a string of incised Egyptianizing images, including the falcon-god Horus. The most extraordinary is this caricature of the painter Henri-Auguste Bougenier (1799-1866), who was renown for the phenomenal size of his nose. 

Photo: Mary B. Shepard




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