The Times - UK (2021-12-18)

the times | Saturday December 18 2021 55

Wo r l d

A sawmill in western France has cut a
20m long beam from an ancient oak in
the first step towards replacing the
burnt spire of Notre-Dame cathedral.
General Jean-Louis Georgelin, head
of the project to rebuild the cathedral,
told of his “extreme emotion” as he
watched the blade bite into the 250-
year-old oak at Craon, southeast of
Rennes. The tree came from the Bercé
forest in the neighbouring Sarthe

the times| Saturday December 18 2021

First oak is felled for Notre-Dame’s new roof

département. “This is the first

real act in the reconstruc-

tion of the cathedral,” the

former chief of the

armed forces said.

“At this moment,

45 other sawmills are

carrying out the

same work on other

oaks. The whole of

France is taking part in

this reconstruction.”

The 30cm-wide beam

will form part of the base of

the 96m-tall spire, a replica of the

mid-19th century spire added by

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the

architect who renovated

the cathedral. Images of it

crashing in flames sym-

bolised the destruction

suffered during the blaze

in April 2019.

More than 1,000 oak

trees in 200 forests, some

planted in the reign of Louis

XIV, have been chosen to re-

build the spire and the wooden

beams that bear the roof. Investigators

believe that the fire was started by an

electrical fault.

The beams and other wooden ele-

ments will be assembled in workshops

after drying out. They will be installed

in the cathedral in 2023, a year before

its scheduled reopening.

The National Forests Office said that

many of the old oaks were destined to

be cut down as part of the normal cycle

of management. The service donated

the trees, worth up to tens of thousands

of euros each, to the cathedral.

France
Charles Bremner Paris

Palma island at the end of the

16th century and produced sugar cane

and, after processing it, exported it to

Flanders. In return they sent money

and also Flemish works of art.”

Some of the works are on display at

the family’s Hacienda de Abajo hotel,

which was founded in the 17th century

at their former sugar cane estate in the

historic quarter of Tazacorte.

Pérez de Guzmán singled out the

Leopard

takes stroll

round house

Kenya

Jane Flanagan

With a hood over its head and two ran-

gers straining to carry it, a sedated leop-

ard has been returned to the bush after

wandering into a suburban home.

A large crowd gathered in the town of

Voi to cheer the wildlife officers on as

they struggled to get the young female,

which weighed about six stone, into

their vehicle. The town is near Tsavo

National Park.

Reports of animals in built-up areas

have increased in recent years. In July,

a lion strayed from Nairobi National

Park into a crowded neighbourhood

south of the capital. Big cats are under

pressure as the city expands into an-

cient migration and hunting grounds.

In 2016, two lions spent a day wan-

dering through Kibera, a densely popu-

lated Nairobi slum, before returning to

the park, and days later more lions were

seen in town.

The park is seven miles from the

heart of Nairobi, and animals escaping

the grassy plains and wandering into

the chaotic metropolis of more than

four million people are not uncommon.

Injuries are rare, but in December

2019, a lion killed a man just outside the

Nairobi park, which is ringed by electric

fencing. In March 2016 another lion

was shot dead after attacking and injur-

ing a resident near by.

Conservationists say that lions lived

in the area earlier and are neither es-

caping from the park nor straying into

human settlements, pointing out that

people have instead moved into the li-

ons’ habitat.

Merkel’s rival

wins crown as

party leader

David Crossland Berlin

Angela Merkel’s party has chosen her

former arch rival as its new leader in a

vote that heralds a shift to the right

following its worst German general

election defeat.

The Christian Democratic Union

membership chose Friedrich Merz with

a clear majority of 62.1 per cent. The

multimillionaire corporate lawyer and

lobbyist, 66, beat his more centrist ri-

vals, Norbert Röttgen and Helge Braun,

who scored 25.8 per cent and 12.1 per

cent respectively, without needing the

run-off election many had predicted.

He will succeed Armin Laschet,

whose gaffe-ridden campaign was

blamed for the election debacle suf-

fered by the party that has ruled Ger-

many for most of its postwar history.

Merz was narrowly defeated for the

leadership in 2018 and again last Janu-

ary in votes held in a thousand-strong

college of party functionaries, who

have tended to favour establishment

candidates. This time, the CDU opted

for a membership ballot for the contest

for the first time.

The high turnout of 64 per cent of the

400,000 members, whose average age

is well over 60, revealed the depth of

their concern about the state of the

party and the liberal social programme

of the new Social Democrat-led coali-

tion government led by Olaf Scholz.

Analysts called the result a surpris-

ingly swift break with the Merkel era.

Under Merz, the CDU will shift back to-

wards free-market economics.

Flemish masters ‘at risk’ as officials

turn their noses up at €500,000 aid

The Triptych of Nava and Grimon by Pieter Coecke in the museum of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and

Mater Dolorosa, below, by Dirk Bouts were two Flemish works catalogued by the Spanish researchers

One of the greatest collections of works
by Flemish Old Masters has been put at
risk after Spanish officials ignored
funding intended to preserve the little-
known colonial legacy.
Experts recently finished the first in-
ventory of the collection on the Canary
Islands, where the works were kept as
payment for the archipelago’s role in
the sugar trade with Flanders several
centuries ago.
The researchers recorded more than
120 works, ranging from triptychs in re-
mote churches to sculptures in munici-
pal museums. Efforts to promote the
study were halted by the failure of the
islands’ left-wing regional government
to accept offers of international funding
and the help of experts from the Prado
Museum in Madrid.
“The government’s failure to re-
spond to an offer... of €500,000 from
the Google Foundation to publicise the
inventory... and the offer of assistance
from the Prado has endangered the
collection,” Marta Pérez de Guzmán,
the Flemish art expert who led the
inventory research, said. She claimed

that the benefits to the islands “would

have been enormous”.

She added: “I don’t know whether the

authority has failed to act out of sheer

indifference or whether they consider

the preservation of Flemish art to be

elitist, but research and dissemination

is essential for the people of the Cana-

ries to know that they have a treasure

and that it must be preserved.”

During the 16th and 17th centuries

ships that transported sugar and wine

from the islands to the Spanish Nether-

lands returned with hundreds of Flem-

ish works bought with the profits.

Those pieces that survived shipwreck

and piracy decorated the churches and

merchants’ palaces built after the Span-

ish conquest of the Canaries in 1495.

The works fell into relative obscurity

until the completion of the inventory.

Enrique Luis Larroque del Castillo-

Olivares, a member of the aristocratic

family that owned one of the islands’

most lucrative sugar plantations and

retains Flemish works of art, said that

the Canary collection was “unique in

the world”.

He added: “As a family we are very

concerned about the preservation of

this cultural heritage. We arrived at La

most valued of the islands’ Flemish

works. She described how during the

inventory work her team arrived at a

church in the remote and historic vil-

lage of Agaete in Gran Canaria.

“We found ourselves face to face with

an impressive work done 500 years ago

and magnificently preserved,” she said.

“The beauty, colour, light, icono-

graphy and subtle allusions to the

Canary Islands in the painting of Our

Lady of the Snows, a polyptych, were

overwhelming.

“It was painted around 1530-37 by

Joos van Cleve, a painter based in Ant-

werp, who was claimed by Francis I of

France as a royal painter. The best

museums in the world, such as the

Prado or the Louvre, keep his works.”

Pérez de Guzmán said that her team

was “surprised by the quantity and

quality of the Flemish works on the

islands” but apparently the region’s

government had not yet reached the

same conclusion.

“We just need our institutions to un-

derstand the relevance not only of heri-

tage but also of the economic and tour-

istic value of the Flemish art that we

have in the Canary Islands,” she said.

“The gauntlet has been thrown down.”

Spain
Isambard Wilkinson Madrid

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