The Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence (Chapel of the Rosary), often referred to as the Matisse Chapel or the Vence Chapel.
Matisse compared the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence to a book whose pages are to be inscribed using brushes and black Indian ink on white ceramic tiles, enhanced by the colour of the stained-glass windows. Beginning in 1932 with an edition of the poems of Mallarmé, Matisse illustrated a number of different books; their pages all share the same characteristic architectural space constructed through the artist’s choice of typography and graphic design - pen and Indian ink, or sepia and cut paper coloured with gouache. As in the chapel, the pages of these books are overlaid with patterns and this serves to accentuate their luminous quality and their presence.
In creating the chapel, Matisse went beyond the specific religious ritual for which it is the framework: he was also motivated by his personal view of the archetypes represented by light and space. The boundless white inside the chapel represented the infinite, as well as man’s spiritual dimension and mystical nature. The chapel is an enclosed space built around the idea of man’s potential salvation; this is symbolised by the disproportionate height and verticality of the chapel’s bell tower, which extends upwards towards the sky, and by the brightness from the sky that enters the chapel through its windows. The building represents an embodied metaphor for our efforts to escape from material and spiritual constraints and return to a state of transcendence; it does this without destroying the identity of the person who comes to it to pray or to visit - instead it assuages their suffering.
(RA)