Par
Géraldine Lebourgeois
Published on
Jan 22, 2025 at 2:28 p.m.
This will be the sixth and final bell intended for theroyal abbey of Notre-Dame de Fontevraudin the diocese of Angers, in Maine-et-Loire: this Friday January 24, 2025in Villedieu-les-Poêles (Manche), the Cornille-Havard foundry will uncheck “Robert” the bumblebee.
The most powerful for Fontevraud Abbey
Two meters high, two meters in diameter and 4.5 tonnes of bronze, it will also be the most powerful bell which will complete the ringing for the belfry of the abbey, joining Eleanor, Richard, Pétronille, Gabrielle and Julie.
All were designed in the South Channel, one per year since 2019 (except 2020). After the work carried out for the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, this is the largest artistic commission entrusted to the Cornille-Havard foundry in recent years.
Tribute to the founder of the abbey
Each year, an artist was chosen to help design a new bell. For Robert, it was the turn of the visual artist Françoise Petrovitch, who will be present this Friday, January 24 in Villedieu-les-Poêles.
-Through her engraving work, she evokes the life of the hermit monk to whom the drone pays homage, Robert d'Arbrissel, born in Rennes around 1045, founder of the religious community of Fontevraud, and of its abbey, with the protection of the Angevin aristocracy in 1101.
“Innovative, non-conformist, perpetually in motion, Robert d'Arbrissel never settled down, even after the founding of the Abbey. I wanted to embody this movement in the composition. Three figures in profile – Robert and two abbesses – pass each other without meeting. One of the women is upside down, hair blowing in the wind, in a vision of the overthrow of heaven and earth,” the visual artist evokes in particular about the chosen iconography, which also evokes nature, freedom…
Robert is due to be delivered in April 2025, ready to ring in Easter in one of the greatest monastic cities in Europe.
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