A Lost Gothic Sculpture from the Notre-Dame Choir Screen Found in the USA

During the restoration of the cathedral of Notre-Dame (2021–2024), an American art historian was investigating fragments of Gothic sculpture in the United States with possible Notre-Dame provenance. One sculpture, a damaged limestone head of a male figure stood out because of its style, but its context within the cathedral was not clear. This sculpture, purchased in 1930 in Paris by art dealer Joseph Brummer, was acquired in 1966 by Duke University in a large lot of the last remaining works in the Brummer family’s possession. These works formed the initial collection of the Duke University Museum of Art, later renamed the Nasher Museum of Art. Although the beauty of the Gothic head was recognized, without a firm idea of its original context it remained in relative obscurity until recently. The first breakthrough came in 2022 when French archaeologists unearthed more than one thousand sculpture fragments from the Gothic choir screen of Notre-Dame buried inside the cathedral. These included several Gothic heads—one with blue, almond shaped eyes similar in style to the head at the Nasher Museum of Art. This talk will tell the story of the discovery and international collaborative research that unfolded over two years and led to the new attribution of the Nasher Museum’s Gothic head to the choir screen of Notre-Dame de Paris.