A Model for Matisse: The Story of the Vence Chapel

Barbara F. Freed – 2003 – France

This is a very simple and conventional documentary made by American professor of French at Carnegie Mellon University, Barbara Freed, about the friendship between a great artist and a nun that led to the creation of the Chapel of the Rosary in the town of Vence, France.  I don’t use the word 'conventional' in a derogatory way; I only mean that the film isn’t cinematic in any way, but more like a segment you might see on a newsmagazine show. In this case, I think the modesty of the presentation adds to the film’s overall charm.  It revolves around an interview with 83-year-old Sister Jacques-Marie, who recalls being hired as a nurse for an ailing painter about whose career she knew nothing at the time.  This was Henri Matisse in the last decade of his life, confined to a wheelchair and yet brimming with a newfound vitality and vision that led to his long series of “cut-out” paintings.  The young nurse was even persuaded to model for Matisse off and on before shocking him with her announcement that she was becoming a nun.  When Matisse moved to Vence for his health, Jacques-Marie mentioned that the Church was building a new chapel nearby and half-seriously suggested that Matisse help design it.  Not being a man of faith, he surprisingly leapt at the challenge, and his enthusiasm forced the Church to approve his involvement since denying him could be a public relations nightmare.  The result is one of the few (almost inadvertently) successful fusions of art and religion in the 20th century; (another of my favorites being Salvador Dali’s illustrations for a New Jerusalem Bible).  Matisse’s colorful and primitive drawings lend a childlike innocence to the facility; he took an interest not only in the drawings on the walls and the stained-glass windows, but in every detail of the chapel, including the clerical vestments, the light-reflecting materials in the mortar, and even the utensils kept on the pulpit for use in sacraments.  The chapel was the capstone of Matisse’s career and the work of which he was most proud.  It represents the inherently spiritual quest in the truest art, something that is usually overlooked by hardliners in the worlds of both religion and art.  For Matisse, the artistic mission is inherently spiritual, equally for the creator and the admirer, and whether the supreme power is nature, God or something else, the best art leads to empathy, wisdom, comfort and even transcendence; the very things that religion was created to provide.